The 14-year-old, alias “Nash,” one of the suspects in the Tacloban City school shooting, had long dreamed of becoming a police officer, according to his aunt, Police Staff Sergeant Arla Paciencia, on Wednesday.
During a Senate probe into the Tacloban shooting incident, Paciencia, the aunt of the teenager identified as alias "Nash," said the boy "looked up to" her and had expressed his desire to follow in her footsteps.
"He told me he wanted to be a police officer like me. He looked up to me," Paciencia told lawmakers.
She said she had taken her nephew to a firing range once after Nash asked to experience firearms training.
"He wanted to be a police officer and he was asking if I could bring him to the firing range," she added.
When asked how Nash obtained the gun, Paciencia revealed that the teenager unlawfully entered her locked house and stole the service weapon before the shooting at San Jose National High School, where three people were killed.
"Nash unlawfully entered my own house. He forcibly damaged my locker, which was locked. My house was locked as well," she said.
She explained that her service firearm was kept inside a gun box stored in a locked plastic locker, and that she alone had possession of the keys to the house.
"It was a plastic locker and my firearm was inside a gun box. The locker was also locked. I am the only one who had possession of the key to my house," Paciencia said.
During the hearing, Paciencia acknowledged that a safety vault—not a plastic locker—is the standard storage required for the safekeeping of firearms.
Authorities also identified the weapon supposedly used by Nash as a government-issued 9mm Glock 17 assigned to Paciencia.
Police officials also disclosed during the Senate inquiry that another firearm used in the Tacloban school shooting by the 15-year-old suspect was owned by his grandfather.
The panel resumed its investigation into child safety in digital spaces following the June 22 shooting at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, in which two minors allegedly opened fire, killing three students and injuring 20 others.
