By JUN ARIOLO AGUIRRE and BOY RYAN ZABAL
KALIBO, Aklan — At least 17 elementary pupils and high school students from Boracay who were staying in an alleged drug den here were taken to the municipal police station.
They happened to be sleeping over in a boardinghouse where four drug suspects, who were subjects of a raid at about 3 a.m. on Sunday, were having a pot session.
Police operatives swooped down on the boardinghouse in Villa Salvacion, Barangay Andagao, and collared Jomer Hablero, 28, of Dumarao, Capiz, and his live-in partner, Quennie Panares, 18; Mike Hilario, 37, of Goding Ramos Street, Barangay Poblacion; and Regie Nabor, 23, of Barangay Estancia.
They also took the pupils and students and held them at the police station for safekeeping.
“(The children) did not know that the police have been conducting surveillance on the boardinghouse,” said Insp. Wilfredo Hofileña, head of the Provincial Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Group (PAIDSOTG).
SPO4 Babylyn Daylusan of the police’s Women and Children Welfare Desk said the children were members of a dance group that joined a contest here on Saturday evening.
They stayed in their friend’s boardinghouse and planned to go home at 4 a.m. on Sunday, Daylusan said.
They were clueless that a group of adults was having a pot session in the same boardinghouse. “They were at a wrong place at the wrong time,” said the police. “They denied participation in illegal drug activities.”
As soon as they arrived at the police station, policemen encouraged them to contact their respective parents. A Women and Children Welfare Desk officer also interviewed them.
A parent said their child was in this town only to support their team in a dance contest organized by a local mall.
Another parent said their children were shocked when armed men woke them up but calmed down when the men identified themselves as policemen.
The children, along with their parents, were allowed to go back home to Boracay at 9 p.m. on Sunday but not before having them undergo a drug test at the provincial hospital here.
“We do not have any plan to file a complaint against the responding police officers since our children were not harmed,” one of the parents said. “We will just go home as if nothing happened.”
Joint operatives of PAIDSOTG, Kalibo police station, and Aklan Provincial Mobile Company staged the drug raid.
They seized a sachet of suspected shabu and several empty sachets of the substance from Hablero, a sachet of the same substance from Panares, and dried marijuana leaves and a sachet of suspected shabu from Hilario.
Further recovered from the boardinghouse were an aluminum foil with suspected shabu, aluminum totter, a disposable lighter, and a roll of aluminum foil.
All four suspects were detained in the police station here. They were facing charges for illegal drug possession.
The raid followed a drug buy-bust operation at a wake in Barangay Tigayon at around 1 a.m.
Police arrested Regie Rose, 27, of Barangay Cogon, Lezo town, after he handed to a poseur buyer a sachet of suspected shabu.
Twelve more sachets of suspected shabu and a mobile phone containing text messages of illegal drug transactions were also seized from him.
Police are currently intensifying their campaign against drugs. They arrest at least two to three drug suspects every week. (With a report from Aklan Forum Journal/PN)
