(Eagle News) — The parents and two siblings of slain teenager Reynaldo De Guzman are now under the Witness Protection Program.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, said Eduardo Gabriel, Lina de Guzman and their children, aged 17 and 12, were placed under provisional coverage after the couple visited him the other day.
“I told the parents of ‘Kulot’ that they can trust the government’s (WPP),” Aguirre said.
De Guzman and his friend Carl Angelo Arnaiz went missing after they went out to buy midnight snacks from their homes in Rizal.
Arnaiz’s body was found 10 days later in a Caloocan morgue.
The Caloocan Police said Arnaiz was killed in a shootout that ensued after the boy fired at policemen who were out to arrest him for robbing a taxi driver on Aug. 18.
But Arnaiz’s parents disputed the police account, noting that based on results of the autopsy conducted by the Public Attorneys Office on their son’s body, he was tortured before he was killed.
PAO said Arnaiz bore handcuff marks and had a swollen eye.
Days after Arnaiz’s body was found, the lifeless body of a boy was found in Gapan, Nueva Ecija.
Police identified the boy as De Guzman, but later retracted their statement after results of a DNA test they conducted on the body showed he could not have been a biological son of Lina or Gabriel.
De Guzman’s parents have asked for a second DNA test, and went on to hold burial rites for the body, which they still believed to be their son’s.
They filed a double murder complaint against the policemen behind the supposed police operation on Aug. 18, and against the taxi driver allegedly robbed by Arnaiz.
