CAMP HERMAN CARBALLO, Sta. Catalina–What you don’t know won’t hurt you.
That idiom may apply to some but for many of the 45 police scouts undergoing training here, it’s not the rigorous drills nor the combat missions that bring them fear. Rather, it’s what they do not see.
Recent “supernatural” or “demonic” manifestations have shrouded the 45-day police scout training program here, leaving trainers and trainees baffled and even fearful.
These unseen forces are being blamed by many for the deaths of two policemen, who died in separate circumstances.
Police Officer 1 Maxgen L. Paco, who went home to Tayasan on a weekend pass, was found dead in his room last Sunday with a bullet wound in between his eyes, in what is being considered as either a suicide or accidental firing.
On the other hand, a police instructor, SPO2 Dioninardo C. Tomale, 41, was found lifeless inside his room on Monday at the PNP training camp in Nagbagang. He is believed to have died in his sleep.
Just weeks before the SCOUT program reeled off last March 28, one of the trainees, a woman police officer assigned at 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 disclosed.
It can be recalled that four Philippine Constabulary troopers were killed on this site when some 200 New People’s Army rebels overran this camp, then known as Camp Placido Ausejo, on February 28, 1988.
The female cop was crying during the pre-training orientation but eventually went on to join the SCOUT, said Calacar.
Weeks underway into the training, another instructor, a member of the PNP’s Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T.) in Negros Oriental, upon arrival at the training camp, woke up one night screaming as he was being choked by an unseen force, further saying 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 assistant instructor.
The S.W.A.T. operative was immediately returned to his mother unit at the Negros Oriental PNP provincial office, said Calacar.
Earlier, the same S.W.A.T. police officer was said to have 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.
Sr. Insp. Calacar said since these strange manifestations have “plagued” the SCOUT program, they had asked the Catholic priest in Sta. Catalina town to offer Mass weekly at the said camp, while the newly-renovated buildings had also been earlier blessed. (PNA)
