Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Mao Aplasca was slapped with a six-month preventive suspension without pay on Friday, two days after he fired the first shot that triggered a gunfight between his office’s personnel and agents of the National Bureau of Investigation inside the Senate compound.
Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla announced the suspension at a press briefing, making it effective immediately. He framed it as an accountability measure that could not be set aside given the gravity of what occurred. “We can’t ignore something of this magnitude,” he said.
Remulla was pointed in questioning the legal basis for Aplasca’s actions that night. “Anong karapatan niyang gawin ‘yon (magpaputok ng baril)? Mas mataas ka sa law enforcement?” he said, directing the challenge squarely at the official who initiated the exchange of fire.
The Ombudsman’s office imposes preventive suspension during active investigations to prevent any interference with the probe. In this case, the suspension signals that Aplasca’s conduct on the evening of May 13 is under formal scrutiny — separate from the broader inquiry Remulla’s office announced Friday into the circumstances surrounding Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa’s subsequent exit from the building.
Aplasca has already admitted to being the first to discharge his firearm that night, describing it as a warning shot. He said his team had issued a verbal challenge to individuals on the second-floor bridgeway connecting the Senate building to the GSIS compound before he fired. According to an Interior Department account of the incident, the NBI agent Aplasca confronted — identified only as Francisco — was carrying an AR-15 in a sideways sling when Aplasca fired. Francisco then returned fire before fleeing the scene. The OSAA ultimately discharged 27 rounds; the NBI agent fired five.
The NBI’s own position, as later stated by its chief Melvin Matibag, is that its agents were deployed to the GSIS building — not the Senate itself — at the request of GSIS president Wick Veloso, and that they carried no warrant to serve against Dela Rosa at the time of the shooting.
Aplasca is also among the persons of interest identified by the NBI in connection with Dela Rosa’s disappearance from the Senate complex, Matibag confirmed in a television interview Friday.
