BACOLOD City – Moises Padilla, Negros Occidental vice mayor Ella Celestina Yulo and husband Felix Mathias III are planning to surrender to the police, according to Interior and Local Government undersecretary Martin Diño.
The Yulos have been issued with two arrest warrants for illegal possession of firearms and explosives.
Judge Cyclamen Jison Fernandez of the Regional Trial Court Branch 63 in La Carlota City, Negros Occidental issued the arrest warrants on Aug. 20 – one recommending a P200,000 bail bond for each of the Yulos while the other, none.
Diño yesterday said the couple sent him a letter expressing their plan to turn themselves in.
But the Yulos said Diño must be the one to coordinate their planned surrender with the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology and the Philippine National Police.
The DILG official said he is working with Police Regional Office 6 director Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao for the couple’s surrender.
He told the media that he cannot give any more details regarding the whereabouts of the Yulos for the couple’s security.
In December 2017, the Yulos were arrested at a checkpoint in the boundary of Moises Padilla and La Castellana towns.
The couple was on their way to Bacolod City at the time. They were on board a Mitsubishi Strada.
Recovered from the vehicle were a .45-caliber gun, two hand grenades, sachets of suspected shabu, and P45,000 cash, a report from the Moises Padilla police station showed.
But Ella Celestina said the weapons and the suspected drugs were “planted.”
In counter-affidavit she filed following the arrest, the vice mayor said the accusations against them were “highly malicious, erroneous and fabricated.”
The Provincial Crime Laboratory later declared that the recovered substances from the couple were not drugs.
But earlier this year, Provincial Prosecutor Rodrigo Diaz found probable cause to charge them with illegal possession of firearms and explosives.
Diño said the nongovernment organization Volunteers against Crime and Corruption that he chairs will look into the couple’s case.
Diño was in the city yesterday for the inauguration of a business center along Bonifacio Street. He was also the guest speaker in a seminar for newly elected barangay officials in Talisay City, Negros Occidental./PN
