Boy recounts how ‘bad man’ kills his mother

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MANILA, Philippines – The bad man blocked us and he just shot my mother.

This was how a five-year-old boy recounted the final minutes of his mother, who was shot to death before noon Tuesday by a lone gunman while they were walking home in Manila.

Showing no sign of trauma from the experience, the boy candidly spoke with Manila Police District (MPD) homicide section investigators and narrated how his 40-year-old mother Gina Castillo of Tondo was mercilessly attacked by a gun-wielding man.

Senior Police Officer 4 Paul Dennis Javier, homicide section investigator, quoted the boy as telling him, “My mother and I were walking home when the bad man appeared in front of us and pulled out a gun. He shot my mother and me.” The boy, luckily, only sustained a grazed wound on the left hand.

Javier observed that the boy showed no sign of trauma and described him to be a typical child narrating a story. “I am just not sure if he knew that his mother was killed in the incident,” he told the Inquirer.

Castillo was killed instantly from two bullet wounds below the chin and in the body while the boy was quickly brought to the Mary Johnston Hospital for treatment of his bullet grazed wound.

Police Officer 3 Amelito Lopez, case investigator, said that the incident happened around 11 a.m. on La Suerte Street, Barangay 275 Zone 25 in Del Pan, Tondo while mother and child were walking home hand-in hand.

“Castillo had just fetched her son from the day care center when the gunman assaulted them,” Lopez revealed, adding that after the daring daylight attack the shooter casually walked away.

He pointed out that the incident happened near the site where a 30-year-old housewife Carmina Paguntalan was gunned down on June 13 in front of a learning center on Oportunidad Street near CM Recto Avenue in Binondo where she was supposed to fetch her four-year-old daughter.

“The two cases may be related because the victims resemble each other and their children go to the same learning center,” Lopez stressed.

He previously told the Inquirer that the June 13 killing may have been a case of mistaken identity because queries with Paguntalan’s family members revealed that she lived simply and had no known enemy who would want her dead.

The case investigator theorized that the intended target for the June 13 attack could have been Castillo, who runs a money lending business, but said that they are looking at all possible angles in the incident.