The policeman who fired 38 bullets at his wife and teenage son in a fit of anger tested positive for drugs on Monday and admitted that he had sniffed “shabu” (methamphetamine hydrochloride) days before the brutal killings.

PO2 Roal Sabiniano told Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director Chief Supt. Guillermo Eleazar that he took drugs during a drinking session in Fairview last week. He also confessed that he started using shabu in 2003 although he quit after five years only to go back to his old vice a few days ago.

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Sabiniano is currently facing two charges of parricide for killing his wife, Mary Jane, and his 13-year-old son, Aljon Dave, as they were watching television inside their house on Uwak Street in Barangay Commonwealth, Quezon City, at 1:15 p.m. on Sunday.

Based on their investigation, Eleazar said that when the policeman assigned at the Regional Public Safety Battalion in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City, came home, he had an argument with his wife.

Irked, Sabiniano drew his service firearm and shot his wife, also hitting his son who had tried to shield his mother from the bullets.

Sabiniano told reporters on Monday that he also stabbed his son once in the heart “because he wouldn’t die.” His two other children, aged 16 and one, managed to run out of their house during the shooting.

Authorities recovered from the crime scene 38 casings and 20 slugs.

Sabiniano, whose monthly take-home pay is P7,000, said that he and his wife have had several arguments in the past, usually about the family’s finances.

He also accused his wife of being negligent, saying he would find no food on the table whenever he came home. He added that despite his meager salary, she would insist on hiring someone to do their laundry.

Asked if he had any regrets about what he did, Sabiniano replied that his conscience was bothering him a bit although he insinuated that his children would be better off without their mother.

Sabiniano entered the police service in 2002 and served with the QCPD until 2008 when he was dismissed from the service for going AWOL (absent without official leave) following the filing of robbery-extortion charges against him.

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He was reinstated four years later, this time, at the Southern Police District, after the case against him was dismissed.

After a few years, Sabiniano was transferred to the QCPD’s Eastwood and Fairview stations before he was assigned to Camp Bagong Diwa.

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