Muntinlupa driver gets death for shabu

A Muntinlupa City court sentenced yesterday a fugitive driver to death for selling more than a kilo of shabu to undercover National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents four years ago.

Convicted of drug dealing charges by Judge Norma Perello was Orlando de Jesus, 37, of 212 Cuyab, San Pedro, Laguna, who was tried in absentia after going into hiding.

Perello also fined De Jesus P500,000.

However, De Jesus’ companion during the drug deal when he was entrapped, Christopher Viernesa Parto, 26, also of Cuyab, San Pedro, was acquitted.

Court records showed De Jesus and Parto were collared by NBI operatives led by agents Martin Soriano and Pio Palencia, after De Jesus handed a plastic bag containing 1,003.4 grams of shabu to Soriano in exchange for P550,000 in the parking lot of a fastfood joint near the Ayala-Alabang Village.

The drug charges filed against the two were provisionally dismissed by Judge Perello in December 1997 due to the continued failure of Soriano and even the state prosecutor, Ferdinand Abesamis, to appear in the scheduled hearings, causing the release of the two accused.

The government had the case reopened in January 1998 but, again due to the failure of Soriano and Palencia to appear in court. Hearings were continually reset until Soriano was arrested by virtue of an arrest warrant issued by Judge Perello on Jan. 18, 2000 and he was compelled to testify against the two accused. – Rainier Allan Ronda