12/02/2026
The Price of Paper Laws
Kingston Ralph Ko Cheng was 23. A Monash university graduate, a talented musician, and a café owner, he moved back to Cebu to build a life. That life ended on a pedestrian crossing near his home.
A speeding Toyota Innova hit him with such force it threw his body into a utility pole. The driver, 21-year-old Sean Andrew Pajarillo, had already hit a parked car before that and fled the scene. After hitting Kingston, he didn’t stop then, either.
CCTV footage from earlier that night shows Pajarillo at a club—stumbling, falling, and being helped to his car. At the scene, investigators smelled alcohol on his breath. Yet, he tested negative.
He tested negative because the test didn’t happen until 19 hours later.
This is what a Masterclass in Failure looks like.
The timeline from the police press conference is a map of systemic negligence. At his father’s request, Pajarillo was taken to a private hospital where police were kept outside. When they finally got clearance to test him, there was no breathalyzer at the hospital. There wasn’t one at the Cebu City Medical Center, either.
By the time a test was administered, the evidence had metabolized. The police know this. The mayor admitted the equipment simply didn’t exist.
A $100 device at the scene could have settled the truth in 60 seconds; instead, a family is grieving because of thirteen years of incompetence.
This is bigger than one tragedy. It is the dereliction of duty. Republic Act 10586—the Anti-Drunk and Drugged Driving Act—became law in 2013. I know, because I was part of that push. I launched the country’s first “Driver on Call” service in 2012, precisely because we didn’t have a dedicated law against drunk driving. And when the law finally arrived, I celebrated, but warned through multiple articles and tv interviews that without deployed breathalyzers and strict protocols, this law would be a ghost.
Thirteen years later, it still is.
Section 9 required the LTO and PNP to deploy breathalyzers nationwide by October 2013. The law mandated penalty reviews in 2018 and 2023; there is no record of either. Even more disturbing is, in over a decade, I cannot find evidence of a single standalone DUI conviction. Drivers who kill while intoxicated are still charged under the 1930s Revised Penal Code—the same charge they would have faced forty years ago.
Even if justice is served and the driver ends up behind bars, who else needs to answer for Kingston?
The LTO and PNP failed their mandate to equip. The DOTr, DOH, and NAPOLCOM failed to oversee the rules they co-authored. Congress failed to check if the law they passed was ever actually born.
Kingston did everything right. He was in the crosswalk. He was almost home. He died because a law meant to protect him exists only on paper.
We, the public, hereby demand a full congressional audit of RA 10586. We demand mandatory, on-scene breathalyzer deployment for every crash involving injury. We demand accountability for every official who sat on their hands while the body count rose.
Enough.
