note 86223 added to function.unlink

I'm having the opposite problem with permissions from a lot of other people here.

In my case, I get a successful delete when I believe it should fail.

Apache is running as user "apache".  
The files are owned by user "root".
The files all have read only permissions "444".

Yet, unlink deletes the file successfully.

I don't understand it.  Can anyone help me with this one?

Here is the link of code:  
$result = ($item_type == "file") ? unlink($filename) : rmdir($filename);

Here is output from ps:
apache    1334  0.1  1.5  39272 16328 ?        S    07:25   0:04 /usr/sbin/httpd
----
Server IP: 208.69.120.35
Probable Submitter: 76.217.19.49
----
Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.unlink.php
Edit        -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/86223
Del: integrated  -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/86223/integrated
Del: useless     -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/86223/useless
Del: bad code    -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/86223/bad+code
Del: spam        -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/86223/spam
Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/86223/non-english
Del: in docs     -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/86223/in+docs
Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/86223
Reject      -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/86223
Search      -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php