Guard dies in accidental shooting
A 26-year-old security guard died when he shot himself by accident as he was playing around with his firearm in front of his coworkers on Monday evening.
The police said that based on the footage taken by a closed circuit television (CCTV) camera, Lumil Ocampo died by his own hand and none of the other security guards at Pearl Lane Hotel in Malate, Manila, had any hand in his death.
Senior Police Officer 2 Ronald Gallo of the Manila Police District homicide section said that the accidental shooting took place at around 6 p.m. at the hotel entrance after Ocampo finished his shift. According to the police, Ocampo took out his 9 mm firearm, playfully aimed it at his coworkers, Rene Luces and Joemar Saquibal, and jokingly threatened to shoot them.
When Luces scolded the victim and told him not to point a gun at anybody because it might go off, the latter laughed. The victim said that he had removed the magazine so the gun was no longer loaded.
After Luces left, the victim continued to talk to Saquibal and in an apparent effort to prove that his gun was not loaded, he cocked it, pointed it at his temple and squeezed the trigger.
The firearm, however, went off, killing him on the spot.
Saquibal immediately informed his supervisor, Mark Anthony Lasala, who reported the incident to the police. The hotel management later turned over the CCTV footage of the accidental shooting to the MPD homicide section. Jeannette I. Andrade
