By Daisy CL Mandap
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| Bondoc admitted making a phone call during which he threatened to burn down the Consulate |
He was not allowed to change his status on his passport to ‘single’ while still married to his estranged wife, making him distressed, so he decided to call the Philippine Consulate hotline on Jan. 22 last year, and threatened to burn down the consulate offices and harm one of its staff.
This was the explanation given by Ronald B. Bondoc,
42, when he spoke in his own defense during a two-day trial in Eastern Court on
Monday and Tuesday. He had dispensed with the services of a duty
lawyer, saying he was being forced to plead guilty to three charges laid
against him.
Bondoc, a Hong Kong resident who works in a
restaurant, also declined to speak with the help of a Tagalog interpreter, saying
his words could be twisted.
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He was put on trial after he pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal intimidation, another for assault, and a third for loitering causing concern, before Deputy Magistrate Leona Chan Pui-man.
Magistrate Chan, who went out of her way to allow the
unrepresented defendant to state his case fully and instructed the prosecution
to furnish him all the documents he needed, set down the verdict on March 20,
after consulting Bondoc. She also extended his $500 bail until then.
The prosecution presented four video clips and one audio recording to prove its case against Bondoc.
The audio recording was of the telephone call he made to the Consulate hotline on January 22, 2022, and was answered by a staff member of the assistance to nationals section, Lhyndzie M. Orozco.
The three videos showed Bondoc visiting the Consulate on January 24, armed with a golf club, while holding his two-month-old baby in the other arm. He was seen trying to enter the assistance to nationals section, then pushing a male staff member who blocked his way.
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This formed the basis of the assault charge against him.
The fourth video showed him entering the lift lobby of
the Consulate, then turning in circles while holding a metal bar, before putting
this down on the desk of the security officer beside the entrance to the public
area.
This was the basis of the “loitering causing concern”
charge against him.
To prove the first charge, prosecution called Orozco to the witness stand.
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Orozco said that as soon as Bondoc identified himself,
she recorded their conversation using her personal mobile phone. She said she
had heard of Bondoc going to the Consulate twice earlier that year, and
creating trouble.
The first was when he hurled a monobloc chair at the
glass window of the office of the then social welfare attache, and the second,
when he threw coffee cans at the glass entrance to the Consulate.
In the first three to five minutes of the recorded
conversation, Bondoc could be heard hurling expletives, threatening to harm
another staff called “Arnel,” and burning down the Consulate offices.
“He said it more than two times, in Tagalog,” said
Orozco. “He also said, if I burn down the Consulate you will be my witness.”
She said she stopped recording the conversation after sometime as “he was just
repeating himself.”
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But Orozco said she got so worried that the next day,
which was a Sunday, she immediately reported the incident to her superior,
Consul Paulo Saret, and turned over the audio recording of Bondoc’s phone call.
Asked by Bondoc during cross examination why no
immediate action was taken over his phone call when it supposedly got her
scared, Orozco said the Consulate still needed to inform Consul General Raly
Tejada and ask his permission to report the matter to the police.
She also said the incident on January 24 prodded Consul
Saret to go directly to the police to file a complaint.
On that day, between 10am and 11am, Bondoc showed up
at the Consulate, wearing a baseball cap and armed with a golf club, while
holding his baby in one arm.
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| Bondoc admitted bringing a golf club like these ones to the Consulate as protection |
Testifying about this incident, Consulate staff
Edmound Cortes said that as he was helping manage the crowd in the public area
that day, he saw Bondoc and immediately stopped him entering the enclosed area
leading to the ATN section.
Cortes said there was a standing order from Consulate
officers not to let Bondoc enter that part of the Consulate because of past
incidents.
Bondoc then gave his baby to one of about 20 Filipinas waiting in front of the service counters, then went straight to Cortes, who said the defendant then reached his left hand out to his neck and tried to choke him.
“I felt threatened because he was starting to choke me
while holding a golf club so I pushed him,” said Cortes.
As his male colleagues disarmed Bondoc, Cortes said he
just stood on the side, stunned, and after about several minutes, the police arrived.
During cross examination, Bondoc asked why Cortes did
not produce any medical certificate if he was truly assaulted by him.
Bondoc also insisted he went there with no intention
to harm anyone, as he had his baby with him, and he was not going to be so
irresponsible as to get into a fight.
He also said he had gone there because he received an
email on January 23, telling him to go to the Consulate to resolve his problem
over his passport. He presented a printed copy of this email to the court as
evidence.
During cross-examination by the prosecution, however,
Bondoc said he intentionally brought his golf club to the Consulate to protect
himself, due to “previous altercations” he had with staff there.
He also claimed he was the victim in the incident as
the video showed a male staff kicking him on the back after his encounter with Cortes, and after he was disarmed and subdued by the other men.
In the fourth incident which happened on March 28,
2022, a local security officer at the Consulate called Eric testified seeing
Bondoc enter the lift lobby at about 10:40am. He was holding a “stick” which
he then slapped onto the guard’s desk.
Eric said the “stick” which was shown in court to be
an angled metal bar measuring 60 cm long, was then taken away by one
of two male staff members who arrived to help enforce security.
Not long after, police officers arrived, along with
ambulancemen, who took Bondoc away.
In his testimony, Bondoc admitted he was the one
who called the police and the ambulance staff, saying he was feeling ill at the
time as he had just been discharged from 28 days of confinement, first in a police station and afterwards, in the psychiatric wards of three hospitals.
He said all he wanted that day was to get a copy of
the Consulate’s CCTV on the incident of January 24. He said police showed it to his live-in partner, who saw him being kicked in the back by one of the male staff during the melee.
On his way to the Consulate, he said he decided to buy a metal bar
for a “project”– an enclosure for the tarantulas he was raising at home – and as
he did not intend to raise alarm over it, decided to deposit it with the
security officer in the lift lobby.
Bondoc called as his sole witness a police officer who
was with him during his detention at the Central police station and who conducted a search of his house, saying he wanted to show an “irregularity”
in the way these procedures were conducted.
But Magistrate Chan stopped him from asking further
questions, saying the incidents happened after the event that gave rise to the
loitering charge, and were thus not relevant to the case.
In his final submission, Bondoc said he had marital
disputes with his wife, whom he married in the Philippines in 2014, and they
tried to resolve these at the Consulate.
After his wife went to live separately from him, Bondoc
said he withdrew support for her as his dependant and she eventually returned
to the Philippines on Aug 1, 2021.
On Nov 8 of the same year, he went to the Consulate to
apply for a new passport and listed “single” as his civil status in the application
form. He said he did this on the advice of ATN staff "Arnel," who also
allegedly convinced his wife to leave their conjugal dwelling.
After being told that the record on his civil status could not be changed,
Bondoc said he got very stressed, even depressed, and that prompted him to make
the threatening phone call on January 22 for which he said he was sorry.
But during cross examination by the prosecution,
Bondoc became visibly agitated again, and named three officers and a staff of
the Consulate as the ones responsible for his actions and predicament.` `
He also claimed that as a result of a false report by
this writer which came out on social media on Jan. 30, 2022, he was fired from
his job as architectural designer the very next day. He also accused reporters
who wrote about the case as being on the payroll of the Judiciary.
In truth, the report on the incidents published by The SUN and another Filipino community publication on Jan 30, 2022 did not mention Bondoc by name as the police and the Consulate declined
to supply it then. It was only after he appeared in court that his name was
mentioned.
(As a postscript, Bondoc hurled threats and invectives at this writer both inside and outside court during the two-day trial, as witnessed by several people. He also issued a threat during a phone call he made immediately after the hearing finished, warning of taking action (“May kalalagyan ka”) if our story on the court proceedings was not to his liking. The threat has been reported to the police while the incidents inside the court building have been reported to the Judiciary).
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