Gambling debts seen behind family carnage

Financial problems brought about by gambling debts may have driven a 38-year-old jeweler to kill himself after bludgeoning his wife and 8-year-old son to death early Wednesday in Tondo, Manila.

“He gambled heavily in cockfighting and apparently lost a lot of money,” Senior Police Officer 1 Jonathan Moreno of the Manila Police District homicide section told the Inquirer.

This was the most plausible reason why Nelson Cruzat killed his son Christian Mark and wife Cecil, 30, with a hammer in their home in Barangay 251 Zone before shooting himself with a 9-mm pistol, Moreno said.

Investigation showed that one of Cruzat’s creditors was his cousin Apolinario Ylagan, from whom he borrowed at least P100,000 in cash.

Moreno gathered from the victims’ relatives that Cruzat prior to the killings did not show any odd behavior that could have indicated homicidal or suicidal tendencies.

The bodies of the couple and that of their son were discovered in their bedroom by Cruzat’s mother-in-law around midday of Wednesday.

The boy lay on the bed with a wound in the head, next to his mother whose head was wrapped in a blood-stained blanket. A hammer was found near their bodies.

Cruzat, who bore a gunshot wound in the head, was found slumped on the side of the bed, with the pistol next to his hand.