Vice President Sara Duterte
The Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office trashed the assault complaint filed by the police against Vice President Sara Duterte and her security after a scuffle during the hospital transfer of her staff.
The Quezon City Police District (QCPD) filed a complaint against the vice president, along with the head of her security and others, due to alleged assault, disobedience of authority, and grave coercion when the hospital transfer of the Office of the Vice President chief of staff Zuleika Lopez took place last year.
The police said that videos show that Duterte’s head of security, Army Col. Raymund Dante Lachica, was physically harming Police Doctor Lt. Gen. Van Jason Villamor during the transfer on November 23, 2024.
On January 17, a resolution said that “there is no prima facie evidence with reasonable certainty of conviction to indict [Duterte] and [Lachica] for Direct Assault, Disobedience of Authority and Grave Coercion.”
Assistant City Prosecutor Criscelyn Carayugan-Lugo said that Duterte and Lachica’s actions can not be called direct assault as they “did not attack, employ material force, seriously intimidate or seriously resist Police Lt. Col Villamor.”
“The acts of placing a hand over the chest, pushing, and shoving do not constitute attack or physical force. To be considered as Direct Assault, the laying of hands or the use of physical force must be serious. The force exerted must be more severe than just slapping and punching. This is not the case here. The acts attributed to VP Duterte-Carpio and Col Lachica do not satisfy the stringent criteria for Direct Assault to ensue,” the resolution indicated.
The prosecutor’s office said that the victim, Villamor, was not a person in authority; therefore, it was not an act of disobedience to authority.
“While it is true that Villamor was wearing a police uniform during the incident, the fact remains that he was not in the act of discharging the official functions of his office at that time. As such, we deem that during the incident, he exceeded his powers and was not engaged in the actual performance of his official duties or on the occasion of such performance,” the resolution said.
“In light of the foregoing considerations, the complaint for Direct Assault, Disobedience to Authority, and Grave Coercion… against respondents [Duterte] and [Lachica] is recommended to be dismissed for failure to sustain a finding of prima face evidence with reasonable certainty of conviction,” the prosecutor’s office said.
