Due to a procedural lapse, the Dumaguete City Prosecutor’s Office has dismissed an inquest case against a woman who claimed to have shot and killed her cop-husband, and ordered her freed from detention.
She will, however, continue to face the charge of parricide, which will go through a regular preliminary investigation.
Assistant Prosecution Attorney I. Milmon Bryce Tenorio ordered the release of Kenya Nocete Jardenico, 36, from detention because she was not lawfully arrested pursuant to the provisions of Section 5, Rule 113 of the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure.
The woman had voluntarily surrendered to the police soon after the shooting incident early Wednesday morning.
City Prosecutor Arnel Zerna said there is no ground to continue her detention as the arresting officer did not have personal knowledge of facts or circumstances that the person arrested committed the crime as charged.
Dumaguete City police chief Supt. Jovito Atanacio said the woman had voluntarily surrendered to the investigator on case PO3 Roderick Mahipus after the crime was allegedly committed.
However, the surrender and alleged confession through a narration of facts was conducted in the absence of a lawyer, prompting the inquest fiscal to order her release, but without prejudice to the conduct of a regular preliminary investigation scheduled in March this year.
On the other hand, Supt. Atanacio disclosed that the eldest son had appealed to the brother of his father and the grandmother of the late PO3 Jay Samson Jardenico not to pursue the filing of the criminal complaint against her mother even as other relatives want her to face trial for her husband’s death.
But on the side of the police, it is doing the procedure that even without a private complainant. (JFP/JG)
