ANOTHER senseless death.
Last March 4, another UST student was shot dead on P. Noval St. at around 7:30 p.m. when he refused to hand over his belongings. According to reports, the robbers, on board a scooter, went after the student who was running for safety from the scene of the attempted robbery on I. de los Santos St, which is a few meters away from the UST gate on P. Noval St. The culprits caught up with the victim behind the Beato Angelico Building’s wall and shot him. The student died while undergoing emergency treatment at the UST Hospital.
The culprit is still at large.
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I have always believed that prevention is better than cure, or in this case better than arrest and imprisonment, especially when criminal justice in the Philippines is the topic because criminals and evildoers get to evade law enforcers. And when they are brought to justice, some of them are acquitted because of sloppy police work, particularly the evidence-gathering.
It’s unthinkable that the studied died at a spot near an earlier shooting incident. Two weeks before March 4, a man was shot in the head at pointblank range while crossing España Blvd. from the UST side of P. Noval St.
The shooting of the other man should have brought the Manila police up on their heels. Additional policemen should have been assigned to patrol the area or at the least, they should have been more visible in the area to scare off potential evildoers.
At least, at the moment, policemen and other law enforcers can be seen near the area during night time. I just hope that this won’t be another case of ningas cogon.
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Some issues back, I wrote in this space that the public should stop patronizing second-hand articles, particularly cellular phones because some of these gadgets had been stolen from someone else.
It is not wrong to buy second-hand goods if they came from legitimate sources. But buyers should be cautious when purchasing second-hand items from merchants who cannot produce papers that will validate their possession of the used goods. More often than not, undocumented second-hand articles are the products of robberies or theft.
Buying undocumented second-articles is not only illegal (it violates the Anti-Fencing Law), but also indirectly benefits wrongdoers who will keep plying their evil deeds because they know there are people who will patronize the fruit of their crime.
