Mom killed, 5-year-old son hurt in Tondo shooting
“The bad man stopped us and shot my mother.”
In the words of a 5-year-old boy, this was how a lone gunman killed his mother and wounded him in the hand as they were walking home Tuesday morning in Del Pan, Tondo, Manila.
Still a picture of innocence when approached by members of the Manila Police District homicide section, the minor witnessed how his 40-year-old mother Gina Castillo, a resident of Parola Compound, was attacked at around 11 a.m. Tuesday on La Suerte Street.
SPO4 Paul Dennis Javier said the boy simply sounded as though telling a story shortly after the shooting. “I’m just not sure if he knew that his mother was killed,” he told the Inquirer.
Castillo, who reportedly ran a money lending business, died on the spot after being shot in the body and the chin, while the boy was brought to Mary Johnston Hospital after a bullet grazed his left hand.
“She had just fetched her son from the day care center when the gunman attacked them,” said the case investigator, PO3 Amelito Lopez.
Lopez noted that the incident happened near the site where another woman, 30-year-old Carmina Paguntalan, was shot dead on June 13 as she was also fetching her child from a learning center in Binondo.
“The two cases may be related because the victims closely resembled each other and their children went to the same learning center,” Lopez stressed.
In an earlier Inquirer interview, Lopez said the June 13 killing may have been a case of mistaken identity after Paguntalan’s family members maintained that she had no known enemies who would want her dead.
