For obstruction of justice: Mandaue police to indict manager of travel agency of slain Japanese

A case of obstruction of justice would be filed by the Mandaue City Police Office against the manager of the travel agency owned by the Japanese who was shot dead on the way to the airport Tuesday morning.

This was the decision of the MCPO, according to its director Rodel Calungsod yesterday after a meeting with the Criminal Intelligence and Detection Group-7.

The man to be charged with obstruction of justice is Efren Rosales, manager of HK Travel and Tours, a travel agency of the slain Japanese, Hiroshi Kusaka.

Rosales and a staff of the travel agency would be put also on a lie detector test for the police to determine if there was a conspiracy in the killing of Kusaka.

Rosales Tuesday morning fetched Kusaka at a condominium in Cebu City to take his boss to the airport for the latter’s 7:45 a.m. flight for Tokyo.

They rode on a van but two unidentified assailants on a black motorcycle fired shots at the Japanese while the van stopped for the traffic’s stop signal on the corner of Ouano and Plaridel Streets at barangay Cambaro in Mandaue City.

Kusaka sustained multiple gunshots on his body and died on the spot. However, the acts of Rosales after the incident drove the police to be suspicious of Rosales.

Calungsod said the investigators wondered why Rosales called through his cellular phone a staff of the travel agency minutes after he brought Kusaka to the Mandaue City Hospital.

Calungsod added that Rosales had immediately cleaned the van in a water faucet near the hospital and stopped only when some people in the area stopped him from doing it because he might tamper some evidences.

Investigators are now gathering affidavits of witnesses who saw Rosales cleaned the van, so that charges would be filed against Rosales.

The charge sheet would however indicate Rosales as "at large" because the police had already released him hours after the shooting for humanitarian reason considering his medical history of a heart bypass operation, said Calungsod.

Calungsod said the police would not disregard for now their earlier theory that the killing of Kusaka has something to do with P20-million debt that a fellow Japanese citizen owed to Kusaka.

The police will also look into some business connections because Kusaka had other businesses in the Philippines and in other Asian countries. – Flor Z. Perolina with Joeberth M. Ocao/RAE