Criminal past

Massacres are rare in Cebu but when it does happen, it never fails to shock a community, even one as highly urbanized as Lapu-Lapu City.

A bloodbath took place Thursday morning when Fernando Canillo, a former Kuratong Baleleng member, was shot dead at home with his live-in partner and 3-year-old boy in his arms.

Former cohorts in the gang had tracked him down to his new house in barangay Babag II, Lapu-Lapu City.

They probably came to settle an old score with the gang’s “keeper”, the details of which remain soaked in blood and secrecy.

Canillo had made a comfortable life for himself in Lapu-Lapu, operating multi-cab units and videoke machines, but it was borrowed time.

He lived with security (and worry) on his mind.

Visitors had to enter two steel gates before reaching the front door of his new residence. Inside, there were no photos of the man of the house, only his family.

Whatever debts of ill will or unaccounted loot Canillo had left with his old group, came back for him with a malevolent force.
In war, the death of innocents is considered “collateral damage”.

But the brutality in the way Canillo’s loved ones was sacrificed was pointless. A woman and toddler have nothing useful to give to a robbery gang
Her death, along with Canillo’s, only left two young orphans, who are carry the grim burden of having to stand witness to the grisly murders.

The two children, aged 4 and 6, are vulnerable in several ways.

On top of the trauma of watching violent deaths at home, they face an uncertain future. They have identified a killer, and their “daddy”, in photos confirming them to be Kuratong Baleleng members.

Will the children be released to the custody of their mother, a woman who had separated from Fernando, and now turns up with disturbing claims that she “never knew” her spouse was a gang member?

How long can they be sheltered by government social workers and protected by city police men?

How long can they live looking over their shoulder for “Uncle Kambal”, the gunman, and the rest of his ilk?

There are no easy endings here, even as the Lapu-Lapu city police crow that the case was quickly “closed” with the filing of charges against the shooter and three unidentified men.

Those thugs are out there, walking free.

Life goes on.

And a life of crime doesn’t pay.