Bomb scare disrupts court hearings

Hearings at the Parañaque City courts were disrupted yesterday morning after the court employees received several calls that a bomb was set to explode inside the building.

Imee Polintan, a utility worker at the Regional Trial Court-Office of the Clerk of Court (RTC-OCC), said yesterday that their office alone received seven prank calls yesterday morning. She answered five of the calls, while her officemates Evelyn Velasquez and Ben Hebron answered one call each.

In a telephone interview, Polintan told The STAR at around 8:30 a.m., a male caller, who did not identify himself, issued threatening but short statements: "May bombang sasabog" and "Pasasabugin ko lahat nang korte dyan."

She said the prank caller also dialed the landline numbers of Branch 257 and the Municipal Trial Court-OCC. Unfortunately, despite the repeated calls they had no way of identifying the caller’s number since the phones had no caller ID. — Evelyn Macairan