Agency Case Profile

Cebu’s Drug Lord Protector

Gives Dumpit Away as a Gift

CEBU – Suspected Tomas Osmena “hatchet man” Adonis Dumpit has

been either “given as a gift” or “sold to die,” his estranged
wife says, raising suspicions that authorities were tipped of
his movement and have been lured into a violent confrontation.

“Someone wanted him silenced forever,” Josephine Gabuya told

neighbors and kin who visited her at the funeral wake. Dumpit
had been for many years the personal police escort and bodyguard
of Osmena.

“Daw gi-regalo siya para naa’y mahumot ngadto sa Presidente

(Looks like he was given away as a gift to someone who wanted to
impress the President),” she adds.
Multi-awarded police marksman SPO1 Adonis Dumpit was gunned down
in a hail of bullets by agents from the National Bureau of
Investigation (NBI) led by lawyer Rennan Oliva a day before
President Rodrigo Duterte was to visit Tagbilaran City.

Oliva could not be reached over the weekend for comment on the
report.

His common-law wife, with whom Dumpit fathered several children,

claimed his protector could have called for his death. “It was a
rub out,” says Maria Ella Amores, referring to the shoot-out
during which the policeman was slain.

Speculations over overkill remained pervasive in both Tagbilaran

and Cebu atmosphere, as photocopies on the two-way Globe Telecom
call transcripts of Oliva and Osmena circulated among mobile
phone users on Monday.

Oliva served as NBI head agent of a team that looked into the
2014 killing of lawyer Noel Archival. Known to fraternalize with
each other during public functions, Osmena and Oliva are best
friends, says the mayor’s staff who spoke on condition they were
not identified.

Dumpit, who the NBI said opened fire first, succumbed from
multiple gunshot wounds – one in the head and 36 in the leg and
body, according to an autopsy report.

There was no confirmation on any NBI team member wounded or

killed during the operation, which the Department of Justice
affirmed as legitimate.

A consistent service awardee at 55, a year short into

retirement, but running a clandestine drug enterprise in this
central Philippine city, Dumpit was killed on Wednesday (June
27) in a gun battle with police and justice department agents
sent to arrest him on charges of retailing metamphetamine drugs,
commonly called meth or “poor man’s cocaine.

A senior police officer first grade (SPO1), a rank equivalent to

technical sergeant in the army, he was assigned in the regional
mobile force of the Philippine National Police in Bohol province
in 1989.
Quick to the draw with a pistol, a high-scoring shooter at 98
percent, and highly proficient with a rifle when re-assigned to
the Cebu City police in 1995, he gained the respect of both
peers and senior officers for his veritable performance.

He would chase purse snatchers, neighborhood thieves, and

jeepney robbers, winning the appreciation of men and women
across communities he has helped. Cebu gun club members idolize
him for his friendly manners and readiness to help them improve
their gun firing range ratings.

Colleagues described him as “cool under fire” at each shoot-out

with criminals. “Unlike most of us, Adonis could stare at death
in the eye,” recalls one of his supervisors, SPO4 Rex Campos.

He took the VIP security assignment for Osmena in 1998, when

Alvin Garcia assumed the mayoralty. They became best friends
since then, according to SPO3 Serafin Asingjo.

Osmena became mayor again in 2001 and later gave him charge over
a squad of police officers in the newly formed Hunter Team
headed by Chief Inspector Arnel Banzon, in addition to his
duties as escort and bodyguard.

The Hunter Team has been suspected of involvement in 77

incidents of extrajudicial killings of suspected meth drug
sellers, according to local human rights advocates.

In-between December 2004 and August 2005, U.S. Embassy cable

reports to Washington raised suspicions that Osmena’s “personal
drug war” on meth traders protected three local and regional
drug lords – Peter Go Lim, Franz Sabalones, Rolando Espinosa,
and Jeffrey Diaz - who are known political patrons of Osmena.

A recent sworn statement by detained southern Luzon drug lord

Reynaldo Diaz alleged that the mayor had been receiving
“millions” in protection money from drug traders, and Dumpit
happened to be “one among the trusted bagmen,” who included
among them the mayor’s executive secretary Augustus Pe.

Giving life to the mayor’s directive to “eliminate drug sellers

being garbage of the metropolis,” Dumpit was credited with 14
“positive kills” on drug peddlers who resisted arrest, according
to officers familiar with the operations.
His team targeted notorious neighborhood thieves, street purse
snatchers, and jeepney robbery gangs for liquidation, toward a
contrived mechanics meant for propping the sagging political
image of the Osmenas, analysts at the U.S. Department of State
say.

Later charged with homicide charge for the 2004 death of robbery
suspect Ron Go, who he allegedly gunned down on the way to
surrender, Dumpit took to hiding for six years, gave up in
February 2010, and sentenced to six years.

After wrapping up his sentence on good behavior in a Leyte jail,

Osmena paid P250,000 for his provisional liberty bond, brought
him back to Cebu City on a private plane, and worked out his
reinstatement into the police after quashing the administrative
lapses of the complaint within days after President Rodrigo
Duterte assumed the presidency.

He and another police escort, who were suspected of protecting

drug lords, were ordered for Bohol police duty in August 2016,
along with known Osmena associates, Senior Superintendents
George Ylanan, Paul Labra, and Rex Derilo, who sent to faraway
Mindanao assignments.

The police regional office recalled him to Cebu in October 2017

after the mayor asked him to assume caretaker duties as barangay
captain in Ermita following the suspension of Felicisimo
Rupinta.

He was ordered to another Bohol duty on June 14, 2018. His

estranged wife claims he was assigned to Bohol to keep
investigators off the scent on the “principal protector” of the
underground, widespread P5-billion-a-year metamphetamine
hydrochloride enterprise based in nearby Cebu.(With Interpol
reports, NBI summary profiles, and CIA Manila station inputs)