Trainee "commits suicide"; mentor dies "inexplicably"

DUMAGUETE CITY, Philippines – A Philippine National Police trainee enrolled in an ongoing special counter-insurgency program died of a gunshot wound on Sunday while one of his instructors was found dead in his room at a police training camp in Barangay Nagbagang in Sta. Catalina, Negros Oriental the following day.

Police Officer 1 Maxgen Paco, a member of the PNP Scout Class 30-12 was allowed to go home on a special pass Saturday and was supposed to return to Nagbagang on Sunday, according to Sr. Insp. Dexter Calacar, training manager of the Regional Special Training Unit 7 of the Police Regional Office-7.

Early Sunday, family members however reported that Paco died of a single gunshot wound to his face, specifically between his eyes, in what police investigators surmised as a possibly self-inflicted wound or a result of accidental firing, said Calacar.

Initial investigation showed Paco had a serious fight with his girlfriend that might have driven him to commit suicide, according to his parents as quoted by the police. On the other hand, shortly before Paco was to return to training, he was also said to have been cleaning a firearm that could have discharged by accident, said Calacar. 

The next day, 41-year-old SPO2 Dioninardo Tomale, of Basay town in Negros Oriental, who was an assistant instructor detailed to RSTU-7, was found lifeless inside his room at the training camp, Calacar told The Freeman .

Calacar recounted that at around 7 a.m. Monday, they pounded on the door to the room of the instructor after he failed to get up for breakfast and did not respond. Training staff went round to the back of the building and peered through the window panes and saw Tomale was lying prone on his bed and was not moving.

Repeated calls to him were futile, prompting them to take down the glass windows. Upon reaching Tomale’s bed, they found him already lifeless, stiff, and bluish-purple in color.

The body was rushed to the Bayawan District Hospital in nearby Bayawan City where an attending physician declared him dead on arrival.

Calacar said initial investigation showed Tomale died in his sleep due to a dreadful nightmare in a still unexplained cause of death.

Natural events vs paranormal activity

Recent events shrouding the 45-day PNP Scout program at the historically “war-ravaged” Camp Herman Carballo in Nagbagang has left trainers and trainees baffled and even fearful while some of them have expressed skepticism over some questionable “supernatural and/or demonic” manifestations.

Lead trainer Calacar admitted that, while he was a non-believer of the paranormal, many of the training staff and police officers enrolled in the program were almost convinced that the recent occurrences may be linked to some bizarre happenings.

Weeks before the Scout program started last March 28, one of the trainees, a woman police officer assigned to the Regional Public Safety Battalion in Mabinay, Negros Oriental, claimed to have a “third eye” and that she saw in her dream many dead people at what later turned out to be the training site in Nagbagang, Calacar said.

The female police officer was crying during the pre-training orientation but eventually went on to join the program, he said.

Weeks underway into the training, another instructor, a member of the Special Weapons and Tactics team in Negros Oriental, upon arrival at the training camp, woke up one night screaming, purportedly being choked by an unseen force and saying further that the devil had come to get him.

The instructor was believed to have been “possessed” and, as training staff subdued and tied him, he kept on shouting that the “unseen” warned of taking the lives of a trainee and an instructor. The SWAT operative was immediately returned to his mother unit at the Negros Oriental Police Provincial Office, said Calacar.

Earlier, the same SWAT member reportedly burned two dead tree stumps to clear the training field inside the camp.

Last April 13, at least nine Scout trainees were also rushed to the hospital for treatment due to perceived over-exposure to the scorching heat during their regular daily run.

Calacar told The Freeman that since these strange manifestations have “plagued” the Scout program, they had asked the Catholic priest in Sta. Catalina to offer Mass weekly at the camp, while the newly-renovated buildings were earlier blessed.

The camp was notorious for an attack in the late 80s by a truckload of New People’s Army that opened fire and killed a number of members of the then Philippine Constabulary/Integrated National Police at the height of the insurgency problem in the province.

Known back then as Camp Ausejo, its buildings and grounds were left unattended for years until recently when the PNP hierarchy allocated some funds for its renovation.

With already one casualty, the remaining 150 Scout trainees are set to graduate by the end of May, Calacar added.  (FREEMAN)