Man tagged in coed’s slay at Manila condo

MANILA, Philippines–The Manila police are set to file a murder charge against a man who allegedly stabbed dead a 19-year-old female student at her condominium unit in Sta. Mesa Monday morning.

The suspect, Joseph Andrew Espiritu, had cuts on his neck when security guards found him near the crime scene inside Greenville Condominiums, where he had spent the night with the victim, Jackie Taningco.

Espiritu, a 32-year-old call center agent, is married and has a family based in San Pablo, Laguna province, according to the case investigator, SP01 Christian Caparas of the Manila Police District’s (MPD’s) homicide section.

In a statement to the police, Taningco’s househelp Recil Ramos said her employer and Espiritu were still asleep in the living room when she left the second-floor condo unit for an errand around 5:30 a.m.

When Ramos returned about three hours later, she heard Taningco screaming from the bedroom.

She rushed out to seek help from security guards, who later found Taningco bleeding in the bedroom and Espiritu, his neck wounded, already out on the stairway. Investigators surmised that he tried to kill himself.

Taningco succumbed to her stab wounds at the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Hospital, where Espiritu also received treatment and was declared in stable condition at press time.

The MPD has since kept him under guard at the hospital.

According to the victim’s elder sister, Kim Angeles, Taningco was able to tell her before she died that it was Espiritu who stabbed her sibling.–Nathaniel R. Melican