ILOILO City – Four people including one the police identified as a city government employee were arrested in separate illegal drug buy-bust operations in Jaro and La Paz districts.
The operations were only minutes apart – the one in La Paz was staged at around 9:15 p.m. on Friday while the one in Jaro was executed at around 9:50 p.m., police said.
It was in Barangay Fatima, Jaro where city hall worker Winstone Porras was caught for drug peddling, said Chief Inspector Traquilino Querubin, district police head.
Arrested along with Porras was the 24-year-old Jerky Marie Jubelag, who the police identified as a sex worker.
Both Porras, a resident of Barangay Dela Rama, and Jubelag of this city were detained at the Jaro police station.
In Barangay Burgos, La Paz, police arrested live-in partners Catherine Villaruz, 22, of the same village and Carl De Guzman, 28, of Barangay Montinola, Jaro also for drug pushing.
The couple yielded shabu worth P300,000, said Senior Inspector Kenneth Bermejo, chief of the Regional Drug Enforcement Unit of the Police Regional Office 6.
Porras was an administrative assistant I at the City Planning and Development Office. He was once a staffer of former vice mayor Victor Facultad and some city councilors, Querubin said.
Porras sold to an undercover police agent a sachet of shabu for P1,600 while Jubelag conspired with the latter in selling the prohibited substance, said Querubin.
Four more plastic packs of shabu were seized from Porras.
Most of Porras’ customers were sex workers, Querubin said. Porras admitted that he has been using illegal drugs since he was in high school, the Jaro police chief added.
After the La Paz operation, Villaruz and De Guzman were detained at the district police station.
The couple sold to an undercover policeman two small sachets of shabu for P2,200.
Villaruz and De Guzman resisted arrest but the operating team subdued them, Bermejo said. A big plastic pack of the same substance was seized from the suspects.
Citing intelligence information, the couple gets their stocks from a supplier in Manila who sends them to this city via a vessel.
“They just received their supply when we conducted the operation,” said Bermejo. (With Ian Paul Cordero/PN)
