The suspect David Lim Jr, who was the target of manhunt last March after a dash cam captured Lim shooting nurse Ephraim Nuñal twice, will be allowed to go on an Alaskan cruise with his family.
The court order, issued on May 10, found “no problem” with the suspect’s plea as long as he would return to face charges of frustrated homicide and illegal possession of a weapon.
News website Inquirer.net quoted the judge’s order: “The crime charged against herein accused is not among those that affects the interest of the national security, or public health, wherein the right to travel could be impaired as provided under section 6, article 2 of the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines.”
The Inquirer reported that Lim’s lawyers told the court that the family already booked a cruise tour from Alaska to Vancouver in Canada from May 29 to June 2, 2017 and would return to the Philippines on June 8.
The tickets for their trip had already been purchased last December 2016.
Nuñal’s lawyer, Mundlyn Misal-Martin, opposed the request and filed for the court to issue a Hold Departure Order (HDO) against Lim.
Lim surrendered last March 22 after his mother reached out to President Rodrigo Duterte’s aide Christopher “Bong” Go to get assurance of a safe surrender. Go advised Lim to surrender to regional police chief Noli Taliño.
Lim comes from a wealthy Filipino-Chinese family from Cebu and is the nephew of a suspected drug lord Peter Lim. He claims to have shot Nuñal in self-defense. “I fired a warning shot on the ground, as you can see in the video, he directly went to me so I just had to restrain him.. I don’t know what he might do,” Lim told reporters last March.
He was released soon after his arrest after posting PHP145,000 (USD$2,900) bail. The courts ordered Lim to pay a bond of PHP300,000 (USD$6,000) and submit a copy of his passport before he will be allowed to leave the country.
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