Teenage drug suspect survives drug bust in Balulang

By JOEY NACALABAN
Correspondent .

POLICE arrested a 14-year-old teenager from Marawi City during a buy-and-bust operation in Balulang, this city, on Wednesday night. This time, the suspect survived.

Senior. Supt. Michael Pareja, chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Group in the region, said the student, a female teenager, handed over sachets of suspected shabu, weighing about 20 grams and with an estimate street value of P136 thousand, to a police officer doing undercover work at around 7:56 pm.

The suspect gave a sachet to the officer and when the police searched her, they found two more bigger sachets, Pareja said.

Unlike suspected drug peddlers here before her, the teenager did not shoot at police officers with a caliber .38 revolver or a caliber .45 pistol after sensing that it was an entrapment.

Pareja said the teenager hails from Marawi City and lived with her relatives at Villa Angela Subdivision in Barangay Balulang. She relocated here after they were displaced as a result of the so-called 2017 Marawi Siege. Her parents, she said, are already dead.

Police said the suspect told investigators that it was her first time and that she was just instructed to deliver the substance to a buyer. Authorities said the suspect refused to identify the person who gave her instructions.

Behind bars, the suspect pleaded to the police to allow her to go home so that she could continue going to school. The suspect is a student at a public school in Barangay Carmen.

Police said the teenager would be handed over to the City Social Welfare and Development (CSWD).

Pareja’s group carried out the operation with the help of the city police’s precinct No. 2 and in coordination with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.