A double life ends
Two days before she was killed, Rohama “Ramram” Luage received roses and a farewell.
“I love you. Goodbye,” said the note.
It was given at dinner in a local restaurant by the man she had tried to break off with after a five-year relationship made riskier by the fact that he was married and a government official in Cebu City.
The murder of Luage, 32, who was found on Thursday with a bullet through her heart in a mountain slope of Balamban town left her family and co-workers as horrified and shocked as those of 39-year-old Mabini barangay captain Rey Oybenes.
Oybenes, a jolly, well-loved village chief, was identified as the man who was seen dumping her body off the roadside of the Transcentral Highway about 1 p.m. on Thursday.
He committed suicide in his government-issued Toyota Hilux with a shot in the chest. The locked truck was opened at 7 p.m. by a desperate brother who smashed the window with a rock.
“It was really a crime of passion,” said Cebu City Police chief Senior Supt. Mariano Natuel.
He said the couple broke up in February but Oybenes had tried to win her back.
Police are conducting a ballistics test of the .45 caliber pistol found on Oybenes’ lap but are almost certain of their findings: murder and suicide.
Co-workers of Luage in City Hall’s Department of Welfare of of the Urban Poor (DWUP) knew the two were a couple.
Yesterday, her desk was turned into a vigil altar with candles and flowers in front of her photo. The red roses, still wrapped in cellophane with the final note, were propped on the table.
Juanita Baring, an office mate, told Cebu Daily News, that “Ramram”, a widow and mother of two, would tell them her problems and confided that she still loved the barangay captain but wanted to break up and have a peaceful, normal life.
Baring said that after her decision to leave him, Luage received text threats and calls.
One of the text messages reported in the Balamban Police Station was almost a foreshadowing of the tragedy: “Kinahanglan mamatay kitang duha aron wala nay maka-angkon nimo.¨ (Both of us have to die together so that no one else can have you.)
Baring said she had advised her friend to file a police complaint in case something bad would happen, but Luage hesitated because it would expose their relationship.
In their last conversation after the May 2013 elections, Luage talked about death.
¨If ever I would die, everyone should be ready, dress me in white and put nice makeup on my face so I look beautiful,” Luage told Baring in front of her office mates. They all scoffed at her morbid description.
At DWUP, Luage’s job was to interview people asking for burial assistance from the city. She enjoyed her job and got along well with colleagues, who described her as someone who laughed a lot and was “a little maldita but very caring.”
The illicit relationship was no secret to the staff, said Ester Concha, head of the Department of Social Welfare and Services .
“We knew about them. All of us who were her friends, we offered our advice,” Concha told CDN. Both women used to work under Cebu City Council Jun Pe in 2008 until Luage was transferred to DWUP in 2010.
Luage left two children, a 14-year-old girl now with her parents-in-law and an 8-year-old boy, now in the care of her sister.
The small family lived in the Cebu city government-owned condominium, a low-cost housing project where she was allowed to stay for free after her husband, PO1 Noriel Luage, was killed in the line of duty in 2007.
Luage was last seen being picked up 7 a.m. at the condominium by Obeynes in his Toyota Hilux on her way to work.
Her son and helper also rode and were dropped off at school. Luage never showed up at DWUP.
Her co-workes started to call her mobile phone before noon when her son arrived at the office, hungry and waiting to be picked up.
TV news reports at 5 p.m. broke the tragic news.
Luage’s parents from Pagadian, Zamboanga del Sur will arrive today in Cebu and decide whether to have her buried here or take her home.
