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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Dynamite buried near beach resort explodes
By Ramon Jaluag
A BIG explosion shattered the morning quiet of Barangay Pooc, Talisay City yesterday when a “bomb” went off right next to a beach resort.
Luckily, nobody was within harm’s way when the explosive, which was apparently buried in the sand, detonated.
The blast site is adjacent to White House beach resort owned by Genaro Alipio.
The police is mulling two theories in the Pooc blast, which occurred at 6:45 a.m.
One is a grudge against Alipio, 67, the resort owner. The other is business rivalry.
The explosion left a crater measuring four feet wide and three feet deep in the sand.
But no damage, though, was inflicted on adjacent structures and residences.
Elvira Balorio, 27, Alipio’s neighbor, was sitting with friends on the beach 10 meters away when the explosion occurred.
“Minutes earlier we were squatting down on the spot of the blast but later transferred,” Balorio told Sun.Star in Cebuano.
Balorio said the explosion was so loud they immediately scampered away.
In their shock, Balorio said, she forgot to pick up her two-year-old child who was playing in the sand.
Except for sand particles, there were no flying splinters, according to Balorio.
It was the second blast to hit the city in two months.
Last August, an illegal blasting cap shop in San Roque, another coastal barangay, was leveled by an explosion that was apparently ignited by incendiary ingredients.
At least one worker was killed and two were injured in that incident.
Granting that Alipio’s enemies were behind the incident, they could have buried the “bomb” before sunrise, said police investigator SPO4 Reynaldo Vitualia.
The “bomb” could have been equipped with a timing device and set to explode when the area is filled with people.
Nobody was seen near the blast site minutes before the explosion.
But Alipio said that if his enemies were out to kill him, they could have done better than plant a bomb 20 feet away from his bed. Maybe they just wanted to scare me, he said.
The culprits, Vitualia said, could come from any of two groups whom Alipio is currently prosecuting before the courts.
These cases, including estafa and malicious mischief, stemmed from confrontations with members of two fraternities who are Pooc residents, last year and early this year.
Alipio, however, refused to name the fraternities.
The first group messed up Alipio’s resort in a drunken fit and refused to pay the bill.
In the second incident with fraternity members, Alipio was mauled inside his resort after he refused to serve them because it was closing when they knocked on his doors.
Alipio is also not too keen on the business rivalry angle.
The resort business in that part of Talisay is not that hot to merit such an elaborate plot, he said.
If rival resort owners wanted beachgoers to shy away from his facility, the bomb should have been lobbed inside his premises.
Vitualia said they are waiting for results of the examination conducted by the PNP Crime Laboratory on specimens gathered from the blast site to guide them in their investigation.
(September 30, 2003 issue)
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