DUMAGUETE CITY—A Canadian tourist and his Filipina girlfriend are facing charges after a bullet was found in one of the luggage at the airport here on Thursday afternoon.
Dale Elder and Nellie Grape were trying to catch their flight to Cebu when the X-ray machine detected a bullet for .22 caliber Magnum revolver inside a sling bag of the Filipina past noon.
The couple were held for questioning by the Office of the Transportation and Security (OTS) personnel at the Dumaguete City Airport.
Elder and Grape were told to wait for the Philippine National Police Aviation Security Group personnel who were supposed to investigate them.
However, the OTS personnel did not notice that the couple slipped out of the office.
When the Aviation police arrived 10 minutes later, Elder and Grape were gone, said Insp. Melvin Atacador, Aviation head in Dumaguete airport.
Atacador said agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) later arrived to look into what happened.
The NBI said that the couple went to the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) to seek assistance. The PAO then referred the matter to the NBI.
“The NBI officials told us that the couple took the land trip to Cebu on Thursday after asking for their help. But we now have their names. And we now know that they are renting a house in Dumaguete,” said Atacador.
Both the NBI and the Aviation police personnel reviewed the footage from the closed circuit television (CCTV) camera at the airport and found out that the bullet was indeed found inside the sling bag.
Atacador stressed that the couple were not victims of the “laglag-bala (bullet-planting) scheme” that befell some unfortunate passengers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.
He further said that he wanted the investigation to be thorough because it was the first time that such an incident had happened here.
The bullet would undergo ballistic tests before the case would be filed against the couple, Atacador added. RAM
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