QC court guards probed on judge’s sala robbery

The Central Police District said yesterday investigators will subject to polygraph tests the two security guards detailed at the Quezon City Justice Hall when robbers broke into the sala of Branch 95 Judge Diosdado Peralta Wednesday night and stole vital pieces of evidence.

The security guards, Charito Madriaga and Alex Briones, have denied participation in the crime when they showed up at the CPD-Criminal Investigation Unit yesterday.

They said the robbers apparently entered the building by scaling the wall and slipping into a slightly opened window. They said they did notice that the light at the staff room of Judge’s Peralta’s court was on when they made the rounds of the four-level building at around 11 p.m.

According to the guards, they knocked at the staff room’s door several times but got no answer. They duly noted this observation on the logbook they regularly keep, the guards said.

Investigator PO2 Edwin De la Cruz said he has asked Madriaga and Briones to submit a copy of the report they made about the incident to the CIU.

He said investigators want the guards to submit themselves to a lie-detector test to see if they are telling the truth. Investigators yet have no idea how many persons took part in the break-in but they have lifted sets of fingerprints from a metal cabinet where the stolen evidence were stored.

Investigators are looking at the inside job angle, considering that the suspects apparently knew where to look for the evidence.

An inventory showed the robbers took away seven guns, two .45 caliber pistols, a .25 caliber pistol, a .38 caliber revolver, a 9 mm pistol and a 5.56 mm HK automatic rifle, and some 1.2 kilos of shabu.

The judge, however, assured that the loss of the evidence would not in any way affect the outcome of the cases in which these have been introduced, noting that the evidence have already been admitted after they were formally offered in court.

Peralta blew his top when he heard the security guards’ story. He said the incident only showed how incompetent the security men detailed at the Justice Hall building were in performing their duties. "What if instead of robbing my office, the suspects planted a mail bomb right on my desk?" said the 48-year old judge, who sits on a special criminal court trying controversial cases.

He said he could not think of anyone who wanted to steal the evidence. But the judge did try to be good-natured about it, noting that Thursday happened to be the fourth death anniversary of a brother who perished in an accident.

He said the night the robbery happened, he dreamed of a helicopter in a crash dive. "Maybe my brother was just reminding me," he said.