Mystery of the missing inmate

**loki_chaos** · August 12th, 2010 10:06 PM

Not sure if this has been posted, but here it is anyway.

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/ceb...missing-inmate

Five inmates escaped a police precinct in Agora, Lapasan in Cagayan de Oro City, but four of them were recaptured shortly after.

In an interview, one of the inmates disclosed that they didn’t have a hard time busting out.

A police officer was busy playing the video game “Plants vs. Zombies” and left the keys. The inmates had no trouble stealing them.

In Cebu City, 35-year-old Reynard Marturillas remains missing from his cell in the city jail. Carelessness may have something to do with that too.

A stinking garbage truck remains Marturillas’ suspected getaway vehicle.

How clever.

If you ask the Department of Public Services (DPS), there was no way a man could be smuggled in the thin layer of trash that day without being noticed.

They said he would have surely collapsed from the stench of food slop collected from the jail.

But a convicted prisoner, who is due to be shipped out to the National Bilibid Prison in Muntinglupa, would surely find the will to endure a ride that smells to the high heavens.

The truck arrived at 2 p.m. Marturillas’ escape was only discovered during the 8 p.m. routine head count of inmates. PNP guards are still looking for the fleeing felon.

The Cebu city government has two reasons to solve the mystery.

First, the truck and sanitary workers belong to the city government. Negligence or collusion by personnel are major charges.

Second, the city has time and again appropriated funds to reinforce and improve the city jail’s facilities in barangay Kalunasan.

“The wall was made higher, additional barbed wire was installed, security measures were tightened,” said City Councilor Augustus “Jun” Pe, “but why was the inmate still able to escape?”

How indeed did all that tax money for better security get undone by a sneaky garbage truck?

There is a possibiliy, one not remote, that the garbage truck is actually red herring for a deeper case of negligence.

If the inmate had slipped out in circumstances as ludicrous as the Cagayan de Oro police guard’s videogame amnesia, no amount of barbed wire or masonry work would be enough.

Police will just have to find Marturillas and ask him how he did it.