By RUBY P. SILUBRICO
ILOILO City — It was time for Rey Julius “Tata” de los Reyes to land in jail.
Police arrested de los Reyes, an attempted murder suspect, at about 11 a.m. yesterday in his house in Barangay Timawa, Molo district.
De los Reyes was accused of lobbing a grenade in front of the house of Benito Bonete, village chief of Barangay Infante, City Proper, on February 12.
Bonete claimed to have personally seen de los Reyes lobbing the explosive in front of his house.
De los Reyes tried to escape when he noticed policemen around his house, according to Supt. Ipil Dueñas, Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) intelligence chief.
Personnel of Molo police station and the Regional Intelligence Unit effected the suspect’s arrest on the strength of a warrant issued by Regional Trial Court Judge Rene Hortillo.
The suspect was detained in Molo police station.
“We have been tailing him in the last two days,” Dueñas told Panay News.
Rey Julius is the brother of the late SPO2 Rex de los Reyes, who was gunned down in Hinigaran, Negros Occidental on January 5.
His other brother, Roy, had been arrested for illegal possession of firearms, ammunition, and explosive in the same month.
According to Bonete, de los Reyes passed by his car parked outside his house three times before the explosion that damaged his vehicle.
De los Reyes was later hospitalized allegedly due to a gunshot wound that, according to his family, he sustained when two people riding in tandem in a motorcycle shot him while he was walking near their house.
Police believed, however, that de los Reyes’ wound was inflicted by shrapnel from the explosion.
De los Reyes’ family and the hospital where he was admitted refused to release his medical records./PN
