I’M sure it’s not the vacation Australian Jamie Allan Morgan was expecting when he decided to come to Cebu.
The 48-year-old Australian national was arrested last Sunday night along with his two, ahem, companions, 19-year-old Carmel Pasco and 20-year-old Myla Tugbong. Yes, two.
Their crime? He allegedly wrote the word “bombing” on the mirror of the hotel room where they were staying in Barangay Kamputhaw.
The three will face charges for violating Section 1 of Presidential Decree 1727, or the Anti-Bomb Joke Law, and for alarm and scandal under the Revised Penal Code.
A person may be jailed for up to five years or fined a maximum of P40,000 if found guilty.
Talk about an extended vacation.
Morgan initially admitted scrawling the word for fun and forgetting to erase it--I would forget, too, if I had two very young ladies as companions... inside my hotel room—although he later pinned the blame on Pasco.
Authorities checked Morgan’s background with Interpol, but he came out clean.
But tell that to the housekeeper who discovered the writing when she went to clean the room last Sunday afternoon.
“The housekeeper was shocked, so she called the security manager who immediately alerted us of what they discovered. We were at the height of our preparations for the arrival of President Rodrigo Duterte so it really caused alarm,” said Atty. Maria Theresa Macatangay, chief of Fuente Police Station.
And tell that to the bomb squad from the military that scoured the room for the presence of any improvised explosive device, or bomb components, and to the guests and employees who had to be evacuated for their safety.
“The room was clean and the bomb squad didn’t find anything. But of course, we treated it seriously,” Macatangay said.
Of course.
Remember Jasmin Sabroso? She was arrested by law enforcers in September 2016 for making a bomb joke during a safety check at a mall. She told the mall’s security guard not to open her bag because it contained a bomb.
Sabroso was a mother of two.
Later that month, another woman was arrested for making a bomb joke while trying to enter the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center.
Emily Baclaan had gone out of the hospital with her friend to buy medicine for her husband who was undergoing dialysis. As they were about to enter the hospital, Baclaan whispered to her friend, “Ablihi na imong bag Ate, ipa-check up kay basin naa nay bomba.”
In 2016 alone, six persons were arrested in Cebu City for making bomb jokes.
Morgan shouldn’t have picked “bombing” for their “safe word.”