10 bricks found negative for cocaine

Tacloban City — The 10 bricks of suspected cocaine found by a group of teenagers in Borongan City, Eastern Samar, and turned over to the police on May 6 were not cocaine after all, an official of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, said yesterday.

Liza Baoy, information officer of PDEA in Eastern Visayas, said that based on tests conducted by the Philippine National Police Region 8 crime laboratory, the bricks were not cocaine.

She said they have yet to determine what the substance was.

Baoy said the PNP-8 crime laboratory subjected all the bricks to the Scott’s test to determine if they contained cocaine but the test yielded negative.

“Based on the chemical testing, the substance did not turn bright blue, which indicated that it was not cocaine as originally suspected,” Baoy said.

The ten bricks, each weighing approximately 1 kilogram for a total of 10.9 kg, would have had a street value of P55 million if they had tested positive for cocaine.

According to Baoy, a group of teenagers found a big cellophane bag containing the bricks of white substance at a bushy area in barangay Libuton, Borongan on May 5.

The teenagers turned over the items to a Borongan city government employee who, in turn, endorsed these to the Borongan police.

The bricks were then turned over to the PDEA by the Borongan police on May 6.

While the bricks tested negative for the illegal drug, the PDEA still lauded the efforts of the teenagers and the city government and police personnel of Borongan.

“They did the right thing in turning over the suspected bricks of cocaine to the PDEA,” Baoy said. /INQUIRER