ONE of three suspects in the murder and robbery of a 62-year-old woman from Talisay City was arrested in Badian at dawn Sunday, Nov. 4.
Supt. Marlu Conag, acting Talisay City police chief, said operatives from his office and from the towns of Badian and Moalboal arrested Jay-R Banilad in his house in Barangay Tigbao, Badian at 4 a.m.
Banilad is one of three men who allegedly killed Victoria Po Loa. Recovered from Banilad’s possession was a .45 pistol with six bullets.
Conag said Banilad admitted to police investigators that he and two other men masterminded Loa’s murder.
Hours after the incident, Banilad and his two cohorts had a drinking spree and discussed how they would hide from the police.
The police are still pursuing Banilad’s cohorts.
The body of Loa, a resident of Barangay Tabunok, Talisay City, was found inside a refrigerator in an abandoned warehouse in the same village on Saturday, Nov. 3.
An open safety deposit box was found near her body, suggesting that she was robbed before she was murdered.
Loa was reported missing last Thursday, Nov. 1, two days before her body was discovered by relatives.
In Cebu City, the police have yet to identify the killer of college student Charie Mae Mancia, 23, who was found with multiple stab wounds in the neck and other parts of her body at dawn Sunday, Nov. 4.
PO3 Andrew Denila, desk officer of the Waterfront Police Station, said the witness heard Mancia arguing with a man inside her bedroom in their boarding house in Sitio Potat, Barangay Tinago.
The witness reportedly knocked on the door when the witness heard the victim call for help. Since no one answered, the witness went back to her room and later heard someone leave Mancia’s room.
When the witness checked, the witness saw a man wearing a red T-shirt and black pants walking out of the house.
The witness checked Mancia’s room again and found her soaked in her own blood.
The police believe that the victim knew her attacker and that the killer may even be her boyfriend.
Denila, the desk officer, said they are eyeing jealousy as motive. The culprit also took the victim’s phone.
The police recovered a knife with a blue handle in a canal some 30 meters from the victim’s boarding house.
Mancia, who hailed from Barangay Tampaan in Aloguinsan town, was a working student. According to her aunt Josephine Antig, Mancia worked in a fast food chain in the afternoon until late evening and woke up early every day to attend classes at the Asian College of Technology, where she was a first year accountancy student.
Her passing is a big loss to her family since she supported a younger sibling with special needs and sent her to a special education school, as well as another sibling who is in sixth grade.
“Unta mo-surrender na siya (mamumuno). Grabe ra kaayo ang iyang gibuhat oy. Wa na lang ta niya patya. Daghan pa kaayo na’g pangandoy bataa. Mao pay gisaligan sa mga manghud. Siya gyud ganahan mo-eskwela, nagtigum siya para pang-enroll ug iya pa gi-skwela ang mga manghud (We hope he will surrender. What he did was brutal. He should not have killed her. She had so many ambitions and her siblings relied on her. She worked so she could go to school and send her siblings to school),” Antig told Superbalita Cebu. (JKV, Fe Marie D. Dumaboc of Superbalita Cebu)