Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Aguilar: All too familiar By George Aguilar Rational Animal
THE death of Patrick Banda was frighteningly captured on video and presented nationwide via the ABS-CBN over the weekend. He must have been a sensitive and lonely boy seeking attention however he can find it. He tried to escape from his frustrations and show his anger for being taken out of school by climbing transmission towers to create his own castle in the sky.
Apparently, the 12-year-old boy suffered from epilepsy and whenever Patrick took his medicine he became hyperactive. It was a medical condition plus his yearning for education and his own emotional turmoil that led him to climb the Napocor Transmission Tower in Barangay Gaya Gaya in San Jose, Del Monte, Bulacan.
He was a kid who needed help. What he got was a bullet in the stomach instead.
At around 5 p.m. that day, Patrick Banda went up a Napocor tower for the fifth time. When the neighbors found out they gathered below the tower and were shouting at the boy to go down. If I were Patrick I wouldn’t go down there just yet because people were shouting at me.
Children, and not a few adults, often equate shouting to anger and trouble. The proper response to Patrick’s plight that night was to talk to the boy in a soft soothing tone. But All I heard in the news footage were people screaming and becoming hysterical with the boy.
This I attribute to the bad scripts and poor acting that often find their way to Filipino cinema and local shows. People watching these shows probably think that the only way to behave is “theatrically”.
Napocor officials were in the area. But where were the trucks with cranes and ladders that could have been used to get the boy down? We clearly are not prepared for any emergencies. That’s because we re-act instead of anticipate and plan ahead of time.
Among the people gathered below the tower was Barangay Kagawad Francisco Gerona who told the news reporter at the scene that Patrick Banda was a “salot”, a “pasaway”, and a “perwisyo” to their community. Gerona strong feeling against Patrick can be likened to the government’s response to the clamor of the people to know about the Garci scandal, and reforms. The people like Patrick were hurting inside and needed help and attention. But instead of help the people got Palparan instead and a lot of rumor mongering and backstabbing from vicious mouths in Malacañang.
Gerona disappeared for awhile then reappeared with a gun at his side. Like a cowboy in heat he fired three shots behind a parked truck with a cal. 22 rifle, causing Patrick to fall from the tower and die.
Before he fell he was recorded hanging desperately from a horizontal bar when he went limp and dropped fifty feet into the ground.
The death of Patrick drew simultaneous emotions of pity and rage. How can a Barangay Kagawad see it fit to take matters into his own hand and kill a boy whose only fault has that he was epileptic and wanted to go to school?
For that matter; how can anyone kill a person in cold blood right in front of his family just because he belonged to a political organization that is critical of Arroyo. No one should be killed just for climbing the Napocor tower. No one should be killed for his or her political beliefs. Was the death of Patrick Banda just a collateral damage?
When Gerona was apprehended he claimed that he was too drunk to recall if he was really the person who shot Patrick, despite an earlier admission. Gago ka Gerona!
You can’t justify the brutal shooting of a 12 year old boy just because you were drunk.
Unfortunately, this needless death of an innocent is becoming all too familiar a scene in our society.
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