UPDATED REPORT
Drug lord protector “sold”
Dumpit to die, ex-wife says
CEBU – Suspected Tomas Osmena “hatchet man” Adonis Dumpit has
been “sold to die,” his estranged wife says, raising suspicions
that authorities were tipped of his movement and lured into a
violent confrontation.
“Someone wanted him silenced forever,” Josephine Gabuya told
neighbors and kin who visited her at the funeral wake.
His common-law wife, with whom Dumpit fathered several children,
claimed his protector could have called for his death. “It was a
rub out,” says Maria Ella Amores, referring to the shoot-out
during which the policeman was slain.
Conclusions of a rub-out and overkill surfaced on Thursday as
the remains of the policeman were shipped to Cebu City for
burial.
His death was “too violent,” Gabuya told reporters.
“Daghang igo sa iyang lawas. Daghan gani gitahi [nga parte],
damaged gyod. Iyang left side murag gitusak-tusak. Kulang nalang
siguro sundang para tadtaron kay iyang paa pod gitahi na kay
gabitay,” she say.
Former colleagues in the police service gave similar
observations. “One or two gunshots could have neutralized him,”
says Joseph Canete, a retired chief inspector who supervised
Dumpit at the Mobile Patrol group.
“Pero gi-ulo man. Naa pa sa iyang kamot [iyang pistol]. Grabe na
siya,” he says.
Cañete knew that Dumpit was a sharpshooter,and could have shot
any one of the authorities if he had indeed fired first as
claimed by the National Bureau of Investigation.
“Naghuwat pod ko’s autopsy report kay di mahimo nga dili siya
kaigo. Kon nakapabuto ni siya, dunay maigo gyod sa tinuod lang,”
he says.
The operation on Dumpit occurred within days after he told other
police officers he wanted a peaceful retirement but raised fears
and worries about his knowing too much about the drug trade in
Central Visayas.
“The death of Jaguar [Jeffrey Diaz] stemmed from assassination,”
his classmates in police training batch say, raising hints that
Jaguar was “silenced” by police officers who wanted to prevent
him from squealing on who the top drug lord protector has been
and killed him in Manila in June 2016.
The woman who gave information about Jaguar’s whereabouts, Anna
Lou Llaguno, was gunned down in October 4, 2016, police records
show. She was the common-law wife of self-confessed drug lord
Kerwin Espinosa, son of Leyte provincial drug kingpin, Albuera
town mayor Rolando Espinosa, Sr.
The gunman and motorcycle-rising look-out, Richard Singco Jungoy
and Michael Lendio, respectively, were shot dead in separate gun
attacks on October 18, 2016.
“I just hope trouble won’t pursue me into retirement,” a
retirement-bound police training classmate quoted Dumpit as
saying in Tagbilaran.
Throughout the 35 years in police service, he has been caught
between devotion to duty as a law enforcer and loyalty to his
economic patron, Mayor Osmena.
The mayor gave him financial allowances to help him make both
ends meet as a breadwinner for two families: Gabuya’s in Cebu
City and Amores in Tagbilaran.
A consistent service awardee at 55, a year short into
retirement, but running a clandestine drug enterprise in this
central Philippine city, Dumpit was killed on Wednesday (June
27) in a gun battle with police and justice department agents
sent to investigate him on suspicions of retailing
metamphetamine drugs, commonly called meth or “poor man’s
cocaine, and coddling meth sellers.
A senior police officer first grade (SPO1), a rank equivalent to
technical sergeant in the army, he was assigned in the regional
mobile force of the Philippine National Police in Bohol province
in 1989.
Quick to the draw with a pistol, a high-scoring shooter at 98
percent, and highly proficient with a rifle when re-assigned to
the Cebu City police in 1995, he gained the respect of both
peers and senior officers for his veritable performance.
He would chase purse snatchers, neighborhood thieves, and
jeepney robbers, winning the appreciation of men and women
across communities he has helped. Cebu gun club members idolize
him for his friendly manners and readiness to help them improve
their gun firing range ratings.
Colleagues described him as “cool under fire” at each shoot-out
with criminals. “Unlike most of us, Adonis could stare at death
in the eye,” recalls one of his supervisors, SPO4 Rex Campos.
He took the VIP security assignment for Mayor Tomas Osmena in
1998, when Alvin Garcia assumed the mayoralty. They became best
friends since then, according to SPO3 Serafin Asingjo.
Osmena became mayor again in 2001 and later gave him charge over
a squad of police officers in the newly formed Hunter Team
headed by Chief Inspector Arnel Banzon, in addition to his
duties as escort and bodyguard.
The Hunter Team has been suspected of involvement in 77
incidents of extrajudicial killings of suspected meth drug
sellers, according to local human rights advocates.
In-between December 2004 and August 2005, U.S. Embassy cable
reports to Washington raised suspicions that Osmena’s “personal
drug war” on meth traders protected three local and regional
drug lords – Peter Go Lim, Franz Sabalones, Rolando Espinosa,
and Jeffrey Diaz - who are known political patrons of Osmena.
A recent sworn statement by detained southern Luzon drug lord
Reynaldo Diaz alleged that the mayor had been receiving
“millions” in protection money from drug traders, and Dumpit
happened to be “one among the trusted bagmen,” who included
among them the mayor’s executive secretary Augustus Pe.
“His patron is inevitably uneasy about Dumpit’s knowing too
much,” Diaz last week told a visiting U.S. political consul.
Giving life to the mayor’s directive to “eliminate drug sellers
being garbage of the metropolis,” Dumpit was credited with 14
“positive kills” on drug peddlers who resisted arrest, according
to officers familiar with the operations.
His team targeted notorious neighborhood thieves, street purse
snatchers, and jeepney robbery gangs for liquidation, toward a
contrived mechanics meant for propping the sagging political
image of the Osmenas, analysts at the U.S. Department of State
say.
Later charged with homicide charge for the 2004 death of robbery
suspect Ron Go, who he allegedly gunned down on the way to
surrender, Dumpit took to hiding for six years, gave up in
February 2010, and sentenced to six years.
After wrapping up his sentence on good behavior in a Leyte jail,
Osmena paid P250,000 for his provisional liberty bond, brought
him back to Cebu City on a private plane, and worked out his
reinstatement into the police after quashing the administrative
lapses of the complaint within days after President Rodrigo
Duterte assumed the presidency.
He and another police escort, who were suspected of protecting
drug lords, were ordered for Bohol police duty in August 2016,
along with known Osmena associates, Senior Superintendents
George Ylanan, Paul Labra, and Rex Derilo, who sent to faraway
Mindanao assignments.
The police regional office recalled him to Cebu in October 2017
after the mayor asked him to assume caretaker duties as barangay
captain in Ermita following the suspension of Felicisimo
Rupinta.
He was ordered to another Bohol duty on June 14, 2018. His
estranged wife claims he was assigned to Bohol to keep
investigators off the scent on the “principal protector” of the
underground, widespread P5-billion-a-year metamphetamine
hydrochloride enterprise based in nearby Cebu. (With Interpol
reports, NBI summary profiles, and CIA Manila station inputs)
