Ex-SMC supervisor found dead; suicide eyed

Manila police investigators found themselves faced with a real mystery when they found two empty spent shells beside the body of a former brewery supervisor who had allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself once in the chest with a .45-cal. revolver.

Senior Police Officer 2 Glenzor Vallejo of the Manila Police District homicide section told the Inquirer that they were still trying to figure out why Scene of the Crime Operatives recovered two spent shells when the body of former San Miguel Corp. supervisor Elpidio Malicse Jr. bore only a single gunshot wound.

Vallejo said that Malicse’s body was found by his father, Elpidio Sr., inside the victim’s room at their house on Jesus Extension in Pandacan, Manila, at around 5 a.m. Thursday. The older Malicse said he heard a shot ring out and when he traced the source of the sound, he found his son sprawled on the floor and bleeding from a wound in the chest.

A pistol lay near his right hand. The victim’s kin told the police that Malicse had been depressed since his live-in partner left him two weeks ago. “According to his relatives, Malicse and his live-in partner had been fighting over their being childless after several years of being in a relationship,” Vallejo told the Inquirer.

“What we still have to figure out is why there were two empty shells instead of only one [when he] had one bullet wound,” he added.—Jeannette I. Andrade and Julliane de Jesus