Raymart Santiago: Tulfo started fight at airport

CLAUDINE and Raymart Santiago

MANILA, Philippines—Actor Raymart Santiago claimed on Sunday night that Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Ramon Tulfo started the fistfight at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 on Sunday around noon.

Santiago told the Inquirer that when he approached Tulfo to ask him about his cell-phone video, the columnist suddenly punched and kicked him and his wife, Claudine Barretto.

“Why would I hit an older man in front of my children? I wasn’t brought up by my parents that way,” he explained.

He said that his two children—Sabina, 7, and Santino, 4—were with him and wife, Claudine, at the airport when the altercation broke out on Sunday.

“I am upset because my children were traumatized by what happened,” he said. “My friends’ children were also there. They were all crying, confused by what happened.”

He is now consulting his lawyer, Agnes Maranan, on the case he will file against Tulfo.

“I didn’t know who he was,” Santiago said. “When he hit me, he was even snickering.”

When Barretto asked him why he hit her husband, Tulfo kicked and pushed her as well, Santiago recalled.

Santiago said Tulfo should’ve tried to find out first what their complaints were with the Cebu Pacific crew.

“He’s also a passenger like us. We should’ve been on the same side. Instead he just attacked us,” he said.

Santiago said the complaint stemmed from the airline’s decision not to load some of their luggage in the same flight they took from Boracay to Manila.

“Our group consisted of three families,” he said. “Two of the families’ bags went missing. The airline should’ve informed us of their decision to load our things on a different plane. Some of the children’s things and medicines were in the missing bags.”

Santiago was still at the police precinct at the time of the interview on Sunday night.