The Public Attorney’s Office on Tuesday maintained Richard Santillan, the bodyguard of ex-Biliran Rep. Glen Chong, was tortured in a supposed shootout last Dec. 10 in Cainta, Rizal.
At a news conference, Dr. Erwin Erfe, a PAO forensic, said Santillan sustained 63 injuries due to 18 gunshots and stabbing.
“The autopsy on the body of Santillan was the longest examination we have ever done. We started at 4:38 p.m. last Monday and ended at almost 2 a.m. the following day,” he told reporters.
“Santillan was stabbed and tortured. He was already dead when he was shot. When autopsied, we observed no tissue reaction,” he said.
Chong, an election reform lawyer, slammed the Philippine National Police for allegedly hiding the documents of the Highway Patrol Group’s operation that led to the killing of Santillan and a companion.
In a Dec. 17 letter to PAO chief Persida Acosta, Santillan’s wife, Jeanette, requested a post-mortem examination of her husband’s cadaver “so that we will know the truth and seek justice in accordance with law.”
A blotter from the Cainta police station showed operatives of the HPG-Rizal were conducting a spot operation in Barangay San Andres, Cainta on Dec. 10 at around 1 a.m. when they spotted a Toyota Fortuner (NOF-845).
Police officers claimed the van’s passengers failed to present any registration paper, prompting them to order the passengers to get off, but the driver commandeered the vehicle and sped off toward Westbank Floodway to Taytay.
They chased the van, killed the suspects in an alleged shootout and accused them of being members of the Highway Boys, a well-organized robbery-holdup syndicate operating in Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon.
One of those killed was Santillan, Chong’s security escort in the past 11 years.
Chong claimed he and Santillan were together in a political event in Naga City when the latter decided to go back to Cainta for a gift-giving occasion for poor children.
The victim’s wife told Acosta that Santillan was “abducted, interrogated, tortured and executed before being set up in the alleged encounter.”
Erfe said Santillan also sustained “seven stab wounds, seven groups of bruises, seven groups of abrasions, three undetermined wounds, five fractured bones, torture marks and multiple trauma in the head, chest, abdomen, feet and hands.”
“He was already dead due to fatal stab wounds before shot [at],” he told a news conference.
