CAMP TOLENTINO, Bataan, Philippines — One of the suspects in the sensational killing of Ruby Rose Barrameda-Jimenez in 2007 was arrested pre-dawn Friday by police operatives at a house on Road 2, Polaris Subdivision, Barangay Mt. View, Mariveles, this province.

Senior Superintendent Arnold D. Gunnacao, Bataan Police Provincial Office (PPO) director, said that Lennard Descalso, 36, alias “Spyke,” a former policeman, was collared at his father’s residence around 12:30 a.m. by a raiding team composed of Bataan PPO intelligence agents and Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) operatives.

Based on testimonies submitted to the Malabon City Regional Trial Court Branch 170, Descalso was allegedly the one who strangled Ruby Rose to death before her body was stuffed into a steel drum and cemented before being thrown into sea.

The raiding team arrested Descalso on the strength of a warrant issued by Judge Hector Almeyda who is trying the murder case involving several suspects under Criminal Case No. 39225-MN dated Sept. 4, 2009.

Gunnacao said that the suspect went in his father’s residence at Polaris Subdivision, Mariveles last Wednesday night after hiding in different towns in Zambales.

When police tracker teams told Gunnacao that Descalso was in Mariveles, he gave the go-signal to Superintendents Allan Macapagal and Joel Tampis and Chief Inspector Rogarth B. Campo, chief of the Bataan CIDG, to seize the suspect.

Reports said that Ruby Rose disappeared two days before a hearing on March 16, 2007, when she was supposed to appear in court for cross-examination over a child custody dispute with her husband, Manuel Jimenez III.

The remains of Ruby Rose, sister of former beauty queen and actress Rochelle Barrameda, was found in a sealed metal drum in the seabed off the Navotas Port two years after her killing.

Ruby Rose’s husband, Manuel Jimenez III; her father-in-law, Manuel II; her uncle-in-law, Lope; and five others, including Descalso, are charged with r murder before the DoJ based on the affidavit of a witness.

The witness said Descalso, the former warehouse officer of Lope Jimenez’s BSJ Fishing and Trading Company, had been with Jimenez since 2003.

Meanwhile, a 45-year-old man wanted for kidnapping and carnapping and listed as the No. 1 most wanted person in Pulilan, Bulacan, was arrested by police at his old neighborhood in Barangay Poblacion last Thursday.

Senior Supt. Fernando H. Mendez Jr., acting Bulacan PPO director, said Emmanuel Valenzuela Angeles, married, of Poblacion, Pulilan, is the subject of standing warrants of arrest for cases of Kidnapping and Serious Illegal Detention in CC Number 16893 and Carnapping in CC Number 16892, both issued by RTC Branch 46, San Fernando City, Pampanga. (With a report by Freddie C. Velez)