New witness in Mark Chua case surfaces

A 20-year-old witness in the March 2001 slay of University of Santo Tomas (UST) ROTC cadet Mark Chua surfaced in a hearing held at the prosecutor’s office at the Department of Justice Friday.

The new witness, who asked not to be named, swore before State Prosecutor Aristole Reyes, and attested to the truth of the contents of his two-page affidavit, stating that he saw the young Chua inside UST’s Department of Military Science and Tactics (DMST) office.

He said Chua even gave him a salute as he went out of the office. Chua, along with cadet Romulo Yumul, had exposed anomalies in the military training corps, among them extortion and bribery.

The victim’s father, Welson Chua, told newsmen, this cadet officer of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) saw his son inside the DMST office with a "bandage of package tape all over his head."

This detail was not mentioned in the witness’ affidavit, however.

The witness revealed that on March 15, three days before Chua’s body was fished out of the Pasig River, he opened the drawer of his table and saw a caliber .45 pistol and a stun gun inside.

"I was shocked so I closed the drawer again and I went out of the office," he said and narrated that he and Arnulfo Aparri Jr. went to nearby P. Noval street to play a computer game.

He said he noticed Eduardo Tabrilla, one of the suspects, playing with the shoelace of a pair of combat boots and trying to tie this around Aparri’s neck while they were on their way to the computer center.

The witness likewise stated that Tabrilla didn’t allow anyone to enter the DMST office when they came back and had in fact "locked the door of the officer’s lounge" which is connected to the corps commander’s office. – Delon Porcalla