A parking dispute led a man to shoot his cousin dead before he turned the gun on himself in Mandaluyong City on Saturday night.
Eduardo Bassig, 52, passed away two hours after he shot his first cousin, Noel Inocentes—a 55-year-old retired engineer—at around 11 p.m. He died at Mandaluyong Medical Center.
Inocentes, on the other hand, was declared dead on arrival at Cardinal Santos Medical Center due to 11 gunshot wounds.
Case investigator Police Officer 2 Jesus Busadre said that the two men were neighbors in a compound on A. Luna Street in Barangay (village) Poblacion, Mandaluyong City. They had been at each other’s throats for several years over an inheritance dispute, he added.
An argument over parking space on Saturday, however, proved to be the last straw for Bassig.
“Prior [to] the shooting, Inocentes had invited his friends to come over for a demonstration on kitchen utensils in his home. Some of his friends had parked [in] Bassig’s [parking space],” the police official said.
Irked, Bassig ordered his cousin to ask his friends to move their vehicles or leave the compound.
Inocentes obliged. He moved the cars elsewhere and then parked his own vehicle in front of another neighbor’s house. But for some reason, this enraged Bassig even more.
“Bassig went inside his house for his revolver and loaded it with five bullets,” the policeman said.
Bassig then walked up to his cousin who was still sitting behind the wheel of his car. He emptied the gun on the victim, reloaded it and then emptied it again.
Afterward, he reloaded the gun for the third time but this time, he pointed it at himself and then pulled the trigger.
According to the police, the shooting of Inocentes and Bassig’s suicide were caught on video by a closed circuit television camera.
Inocentes’ house help also witnessed the shooting as she was looking out of a window inside the victim’s house.
The police, however, said that they would conduct further investigation to determine if Bassig indeed killed himself.
Asked how a man could kill a relative over a trivial matter, the policeman said: “According to their relatives, the suspect had been abusing drugs while his family—his wife and children—was abroad.”