THE manner of death of indigenous peoples (IP) volunteer teacher and activist Chad Booc has been classified as homicide.
This is included in the findings of forensic expert Dr. Raquel Fortun, whose autopsy on the Cebuano educator showed that he suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the trunk and right elbow.
Booc’s spinal cord was torn, which Fortun said could be the most fatal injury.
Fortun’s preliminary autopsy findings raise more questions over the deaths of Booc and four others in Barangay Andap, New Bataan, Davao de Oro last Feb. 24, according to Save Our Schools (SOS) Network, a group of child rights advocates, organizations and various stakeholders.
“We have no doubt that the perpetrators behind their deaths meant to kill them while they were vulnerable. It was clearly an overkill,” SOS Network said.
SOS Network has urged the Commission on Human Rights and local and international bodies to conduct an investigation.
Fortun’s autopsy findings and SOS Network’s statement were shared on Facebook by Booc’s family lawyer Antonio La Viña on Friday, March 11.
The 10th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army has belied the allegations, saying there was an encounter with the New People’s Army-Southern Mindanao Regional Committee memes that included the five fatalities.
The other fatalities were Booc’s fellow Lumad school volunteer teacher Gelejurain Ngujo II (not Jurain Ngujo II as earlier reported), community health worker Elegyn Balonga, and their accompanying drivers Tirso Añar and Robert Aragon.
SOS Network and human rights activists collectively call them the New Bataan 5.
Meg Lim, spokesperson of SOS Network Cebu, said Booc’s family is still waiting for the final results of the autopsy, but she said the family is pushing for an “immediate and investigation” on the reported encounter.
Booc’s wounds, injuries
A portion of Fortun’s preliminary autopsy findings states that there were “internal hemorrhages with lacerations” of organs such as “lungs, diaphragm, liver, spleen, stomach, intestines, right kidney and right adrenal gland. There were fractures of some ribs and thoracic vertebrae (each of the twelve bones of the backbone to which the ribs are attached).”
Bullets or fragments were also found in the body’s trunk through a radiologic examination.
“A deformed bullet was recovered from the left chest wall,” Fortun said in her findings that she signed on March 10, 2022.
The forensic expert conducted the autopsy on Booc last March 7, two days after he was embalmed, in the morgue of Cebu Rolling Hills Memorial Chapels in Mandaue City at the request of the teacher’s parents.
Fortun said she would also need information from the bodies of Ngujo, Balonga, Añar and Aragon to reconstruct the shooting.
‘Bakwit School 7’
Booc was also one of the seven individuals arrested by the Central Visayas police in Cebu City on Feb. 15, 2021, after being involved in bringing IP children from Davao del Norte to Cebu.
The group, also known as “Bakwit School 7,” allegedly kidnapped and brought the Lumad children to the retreat house of the Societas Verbi Divini Philippines Southern Province on the compound of University of San Carlos Talamban Campus. The group was later released after the court dismissed the charges against them.
Booc was laid to rest in a Cebu City cemetery last Wednesday, March 9. (with a report from GDC)