MANILA, Philippines – The 35-year-old owner of a laundry shop was stabbed to death while his wife and his son’s nanny were wounded when four men, who posed as maintenance workers, robbed his home-based store and attacked them when they tried to fight off the burglars in Manila early Tuesday.
The robbers took off with the shop’s measly earnings and the couple Kelvin and Charlene Chioa’s jewelry, aboard the victims’ white Toyota Corolla (UNV-106), bringing along the Chioas’ four-year-old son, before ditching both the car and the child several blocks away from the laundry shop.
Kelvin was killed instantly from a dozen knife wounds in the body while his 32-year-old wife Charlene has been confined at the Metropolitan Hospital, after she sustained a stab wound in the back.
Their son’s 25-year-old nanny, Maricel Librando, remains in critical condition at the same hospital after she was stabbed several times in the body while protecting her ward.
Senior Inspector Joselito De Ocampo, head of the Manila Police District (MPD) homicide section, said that the robbery and homicide happened at around 4 a.m. on Tuesday, inside the Bull’s Eye Laundry Shop at 1604 Yakal Street in Tondo.
De Ocampo said that before the incident, the Chioas and their household staff were all sleeping when one of the stay-in laundry attendants Jane Macaraig, 21, was roused by someone knocking on the closed gate of the shop.
Macaraig told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that she saw four men outside the gate and asked them what they wanted. “They told me that they were there for machine maintenance and were from another branch,” she recalled. The laundry shop has two other branches in the Manila area.
“I told them we were not informed of any scheduled repairs and refused to let them in. They asked me if they could leave their backpack inside so they could return for it later. I was reaching for the backpack, when they pushed their way inside,” Macaraig said.
Once inside the shop, the men brandished fan knives at Macaraig and rounded up the other stay-in attendants of the laundry store: 19-year-old Jenny Rose Puno, and 21-year-old Wilson Clores, who were inside their quarters.
Macaraig and her two co-workers were gagged and bound with packaging tape before they were herded into the kitchen.
Puno told the Inquirer that the men kept on saying in Filipino, “These are hard times. We just need the money. Just work with us and you will not get hurt.” Before she was taken to the kitchen to be with her co-workers, she saw them rifling through the drawers of the laundry shop. “That was where we put our earnings,” she explained, adding that one of the men even fished out the P250 she had inside her shorts pocket and took all of their mobile phones from their quarters.
De Ocampo pointed out that after tying up the laundry employees, the robbers went to the Chioas’ rooms on the second floor of the apartment.
The suspects first stumbled onto Librando, who was sleeping inside her ward’s bedroom. The nanny, the homicide section chief said, apparently screamed for help and tried to protect the four-year-old boy and was stabbed at the side of her body.
Kelvin, who heard the nanny’s screams, then told off the robbers and was stabbed 12 times in the body. He died instantly. Charlene, who went to her husband’s aid, was also attacked and was knifed in the back.
The armed robbers then took the victims’ child after hurriedly ransacking the rooms and boarded Kelvin’s car as their getaway vehicle. Puno was able to break free from her binds, with Clores’ help, and immediately reported the burglary and kidnapping to the police.
The white Toyota Corolla was found, at around 6 a.m., abandoned at the corner of Tomas Mapua and Alvarez Streets in Tondo while the child was left somewhere at the corner of Alvarez and Anacleto Streets. The four-year-old boy, with blood on his forehead, was found by a tricycle driver and turned over to his relatives.
“The suspects might have thought of using the child as a hostage in case they are pursued,” De Ocampo told the Inquirer.
Operatives of the MPD homicide section are conducting follow-up operations for the identification and arrest of the killers as well as the possible recovery of the stolen items.