FLOATING in a tank of fecal sludge, 39-year-old Rodan Manlucot shocked his colleagues in Cebu City before dawn yesterday.
When Manlucot, driver of the septic tank truck, was found dead, police investigators couldn’t figure out whether he was killed or committed suicide.
Initial investigation by the homicide police disclosed that Manlucot was with two colleagues when he drove the truck to a house in Barangay Mambaling, near the South Road Properties, late Tuesday night.
He also helped position the hose attached to the truck to the restroom in the house of their client, Niel Estrada, said his colleague Crislito Villahermosa, 39, to the police.
But Manlucot did not show up after all the fecal matter under the toilet had been siphoned into the tank.
Villahermosa and other colleague Romeo Rabadon, 53, waited for Manlucot. But dawn came, and their colleague did not show up.
At first, they thought Manlucot had just left them, so the two decided to get back to their headquarters in Barangay Pasil, since their manager was also already asking them to go back.
Found
The body was not found until the driver on-duty in the next shift, 36-year-old Robinson Manolo, unloaded the tank’s fecal matter to their sewage facility.
As he opened the tank’s hole, the body emerged.
SPO2 Wetzel Berry, homicide investigator, said they are deepening their investigation. The body was also submitted for autopsy.
Shooting
Hours before the incident, a binge-drinking session also led to a bloody end when one of the three apparently drunk men suddenly pulled a gun from his pants and shot to death his relative in Barangay Bulacao, Cebu City last Tuesday.
The fall of Alejandro Bayawa, 25, to the ground was witnessed by the two children of his friend Lino Arante, 42.
The man who shot him, 24-year-old Reggie Labajo, immediately fled.
Berry, who also led the investigation, said the motive was still unclear, although he doubted it could be a personal grudge against the victim that pushed Labajo to shoot him.
On the same day, Rito Suan Ebaf, 48, was on duty as security guard of a Globe cell site in Barangay Mabolo when, later in his shift, a fellow employee saw him already lifeless inside the open guardhouse.
His death was also engulfed in mystery, Berry said, since no external physical injury that would show the possibility that he was killed by someone or electrocuted.