Student gets 10 years for mother’s murder

I know she’s forgiven me.”

That’s what 23-year-old nursing student Christian Lucky Dalanguin told reporters after a judge sentenced him yesterday to 10 to 17 years in prison for killing his mother and burying her remains at home in barangay Mambaling, Cebu City, four months ago.

Regional Trial Court Judge Gilbert Moises of Branch 18 granted a motion to plea bargain filed by Dalangin’s lawyer.

This reduced his offense from parricide to homicide, which carries a 10- to 17-year sentence compared to 20 to 40 years in jail for parricide.

Christian was ordered to indemnify P50,000 to the heirs of Rubirosa Tenchavez, his mother.

When sought for reaction by the media, Christian said, “Mangayo kog pasaylo sa tanang naapektuhan sa akong kaso (I would just like to apologize to everyone who was affected in the case).”

As for thoughts about his mother, he said, “Kahibawo ko na-forgive na ko niya (I know she has already forgiven me).”

Christian was accompanied by his 56-year-old father Virgilio, who consented to the plea bargain.

“Masakit na makita siya sa loob. Pero yong ginawan niya masakit din. (It’s painful to see my son languish in jail. However, what he committed was also painful),” Virgilio told Cebu Daily News.

He said he would seek drug rehabilitation for his son.

“He regretted killing his mother. He said he had no intention to commit the crime,” Virgilio said of his conversations with Lucky in the Cebu City Jail.

Asst. City Prosecutor Rocky Jones Macabaya presented a letter from Virgilio who supported the plea bargain proposal.

The victim’s sister Vivian Batayola who represented the victim’s relatives and Christian’s siblings agreed to the deal.

Christian first executed an extra-judicial confession under custody of the National Bureau of Investgiation and admitted to killing his mother last Aug. 23.

But he later entered a plea of “not guilty” during arraignment.

He was willing to admit to the crime after consultations with Virgilio and other family members.

Tenchavez was found buried under the floor of a stockroom in the family home in Gochan Subdivision, barangay Mambaling, Cebu City, last Aug. 23.

Christian said he was annoyed by his mother’s nagging and that he stabbed her after she scolded him over broken floor tiles and for allegedly damaging their computer.

With the help of a basketball buddy Randy Vilvestre and trisikad driver Arnel Omere, they dug a hole behind the house. The two men were paid P300 for their labor but weren’t told what the hole was for.

His parents had been separated several years earlier. Ador Vincent Mayol and Patricia Andrea Pateña