DOJ junks motion of suspect in Pastor slay to summon NBI chief

Enzo Pastor with wife Dalia. Photo courtesy of Pastor’s Facebook account.

MANILA — The Department of Justice (DOJ) has dismissed the motion of one of the suspects in the killing of car racer Ferdinand “Enzo” Pastor to summon National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Virgilio Mendez to appear in the preliminary investigation of the case.

In an order dated Oct. 2, 2014 but released Wednesday, Assistant State Prosecutor Susan Villanueva, chairperson of the panel of prosecutors, denied the motion of the camp of Domingo de Guzman to send “subpoena ad testificandum et duces tecum” to Mendez or the personnel of the NBI who investigated the crime and direct the same to furnish the DOJ a copy of the sworn statement of Pastor’s driver, Paolo Salazar, who was wounded when the car racer was shot to death in the night of June 12, 2014.

The panel chair also rejected the motion of De Guzman to summon to the hearing the manager of the gas station in Muntinlupa City, the nearest place where he was arrested on Aug. 26, 2014 and furnish the DOJ the copy of the closed-circuit television (CCTV) video footage of the same date.

According to the camp of De Guzman, the said documents and the video footage are important for the counter-affidavit they will submit to the DOJ.

However, in the order of the panel chair, it cited that under the Prosecution Service Act of 2010, there was no provision stating that the DOJ prosecutor has the authority to issue a subpoena for the presentation of evidence.

Villanueva said that such authority is vested in the court of law.

Because of this, the DOJ also denied the motion for extension of the date for the submission by De Guzman of his counter-affidavit.

The DOJ will again conduct the preliminary investigation on Thursday in the Enzo Pastor case wherein the wife of the victim, Dalia, was also required to submit her counter-affidavit.