Old grudge over unpaid debt leads to man’s death

Settle your debts or you may end up paying for it with your life.

A man who owed money to his neighbor, a taxi driver, was hacked to death by the latter over an unpaid electricity bill in Tondo, Manila, yesterday.

Case investigator PO3 Jupiter Tajonera of the Manila Police District (MPD) said that Giorginni Rodoquillo, a 32-year-old pedicab driver living on Francisco Varona Street in Tondo, died on the spot due to multiple hack wounds.

A team of policemen on patrol from the Don Bosco police community precinct caught his alleged killer, Eduardo Babijes, his

55-year-old neighbor. He was taken to the MPD homicide section pending the filing of a murder charge against him.

Tajonera said that before the attack on the victim at around 10 a.m. yesterday, a drunken Babijes went around the neighborhood to show off his jungle bolo.

He later came across the victim who was asleep on a bench  in front of his house and starting hacking him with the bolo.

The victim woke ran and tried to run away but he had only gone for about 10 meters before he fell and was repeatedly stabbed in the chest by Babijes.

Tajonera said that Babijes had been nursing for sometime a grudge against the victim over an unpaid electricity bill. The two men share an electric meter.

“The victim was apparently a toughie in their area. Whenever he was asked to pay his debt, he would arrogantly refuse to do so,” Tajonera said.