Shabu found on man arrested over car chase after unpaid hotel bill
MANILA, Philippines — A man arrested by Quezon City cops earlier this week after a rampage that ended in Manila was found carrying a sachet of shabu or crystal meth in his vehicle, police leadership confirmed.
Speaking in an interview aired over DZMM TeleRadyo Wednesday, Police Brig. Gen. Antonio Yarra, Quezon City Police District Director, said the man would be tested for drugs after he was found to be incoherent in interviews.
"If you can see in the video, you can really see that he was not in his own mind when the incident happened yesterday," he said in Filipino.
"During the police search of his black BMW, there was an open sachet with white crystalline substance, believed to be shabu and one small aluminum foil strip."
To recall, the man had checked in at the Timog Avenue branch of Sogo Hotel on Monday morning when he demanded the hotel employees to pay him P20,000, prompting them to call police.
READ: QC cops arrest man who refused to pay hotel bill
He attempted to flee on his vehicle once they arrived, at which point police said he also tried to run over another officer aboard a motorcycle.
Police Lt. Col. Alex Alberto, Quezon City Police District Station 10 commander, said Wednesday that the suspect hit several vehicles along the way, including a vehicle of the Land Transportation Office and a tricycle.
Responding officers recovered an identification card from him, supposedly from the Department of the Interior and Local Government, with his job description as action agent of the department.
Yarra added that they will also look at the psychiatric evaluation results of the man who was also arrested in 2017 after a riot in the Manila Police District.
"During that previous incident in Manila, it was alleged that he had a mental condition...We are looking into that, and that is a subject of a medical examination we are doing to him," he said in mixed Filipino and English.
The QCPD chief also said that cops were investigating whether or not the man abused his partner whom he checked into the motel with.
"Right now, his girlfriend is very cooperative. We will see when we investigate if he was abusive or if her rights were violated because if you see, he made a scene in the motel," he said.
READ: With a year left in Duterte's term, UNODC says shabu still a major problem in the Philippines
Despite the Duterte administration's flagship campaign on illegal narcotics, its own data shows that crystal meth was still linked to the largest number of drug-related arrests and treatment admissions in 2020.
A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in mid-June pointed this out, saying that shabu "remains the main drug of concern in the Philippines."
— with a report from The STAR/Emmanuel Tupas
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