Steven V. Pangelinan, right, is escorted by a Corrections officer after a bail hearing in Superior Court on Monday, Nov. 20, 2023.
STEVEN Villagomez Pangelinan was arrested after he called the Department of Public Safety-Criminal Investigations Division and identified himself as the person wanted for questioning.
Pangelinan said he saw himself on the DPS-Facebook page and wanted to clear his name.
Pangelinan, 56, was charged with possession and appeared before Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho on Monday for a bail hearing.
Pangelinan was represented by Assistant Public Defender Charlene Brown while Assistant Attorney General Carmen Borja appeared for the government.
Brown requested that the defendant be released on his own personal recognizance, which was opposed by the government.
Judge Camacho maintained the $10,000 cash bail imposed on Pangelinan and directed his attorney to file a motion for bail modification and third-party custodian.
Pangelinan was remanded to the custody of the Department of Corrections and was ordered to return to court on Nov. 27 at 10 a.m. for a preliminary hearing and on Dec. 4 at 9 a.m. for an arraignment.
According to the complaint against Pangelinan, a Mobil station manager called the police on Oct. 31 after one of his employees found two Ziploc bags containing a crystal-like substance on the floor in front of the cashier.
The substance tested positive for methamphetamine after the police field-tested it. One Ziploc bag contained 1 gram of meth while the other contained 1.8 grams of meth, police said.
Surveillance camera footage showed Pangelinan parking his vehicle at pump number 4 and walking into the store with a whitish squared object stuck in between his left heel and inner portion of his shoe. As Pangelinan made a payment to the cashier, the whitish object came out of his shoe and was slightly kicked to the open floor area of the gas station store.
Later, an employee picked up two Ziploc bags from the floor in front of the cashier’s counter.
On Nov. 6, 2023, Pangelinan called DPS and said he was the person the police were looking for for questioning.
Police told Pangelinan about the surveillance camera footage and the two Ziploc bags containing meth that fell out of his left shoe.
Pangelinan said, “Yeah, that’s my foot and that’s my shoes, but that’s not mine,” referring to the two Ziploc bags.
