Christine Dacera buried in General Santos

Photo from Christine Dacera’s Instagram page

KORONADAL CITY, South Cotabato, Philippines — Christine Angelica Dacera, the flight attendant who died after a New Year’s Eve party in a Makati hotel, was laid to rest on Sunday in her hometown of General Santos City.

Over a hundred family members and close friends attended the 23-year-old’s burial at 10:40 a.m. at Forest Lake Memorial Park amid tight security provided by the police and military.

“We love so much our baby Ica,” said her mother Sharon Dacera, referring to Dacera by her nickname. “We are praying for justice for our Baby Ica.”

Sharon said the family would continue to seek justice for her daughter, the second of four siblings, who was found unconscious in the bathtub of Room 2209 of City Garden Grand Hotel in Makati City, around noontime of Jan. 1 after a New Year’s Eve party with friends.

Dacera was rushed to a hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival.

She was laid to rest four days after her body arrived in General Santos City on Thursday aboard a Philippine Airlines flight. She had worked as a flight attendant for the national carrier.

Sharon said her daughter, who graduated cum laude with a communications degree from the University of the Philippines–Mindanao in Davao City, worked as a flight attendant as it was her dream to take her family on a tour around the globe.

Clad mostly in white shirts, those who attended the burial wore masks and face shields and were required to maintain distance as a health measure with the cemetery management repeatedly reminding the small crowd to maintain health rules.

Sharon thanked those who offered prayers for her daughter’s soul and those who sympathized with the family.

Independent autopsy

The Dacera family was still awaiting the result of an independent autopsy that was commissioned after police investigators, who ruled the young woman’s death from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, showed that the autopsy they conducted on Dacera was performed after she had already been embalmed.

The case has caused much public confusion, especially after top police officials, including Makati City police chief Harold Depositar and even the national police chief, Gen. Debold Sinas, declared that Dacera was a victim of rape with homicide.

The police filed charges against 11 men, most of whom were homosexuals, but the Southern Police District offered no evidence to show that Dacera was killed or that she was raped.

The prosecutors in charge of the case returned the charge sheet to the police for further investigation as they ordered the release of three suspects who had earlier surrendered. Prosecutors scheduled the preliminary investigation for Wednesday.

Picking up on public dismay at the performance of the police, Vice President Leni Robredo said the police were “irresponsible” in their handling of the case, which has touched off discussion about the national police’s “chronic incompetence” in criminal investigations.

Even Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to autopsy Dacera’s body a third time because the police probe was “not thorough enough.”

He said in a televised interview on Sunday that the NBI in General Santos City had asked the family for tissue samples from Dacera’s body to get more information. —WITH REPORTS FROM KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING AND TINA G. SANTOS INQ