Russian roulette fatal for convenience store security guard

MANILA, Philippines – Ignoring the pleas of his fellow workers to stop fooling around, night watchman Joel Tumanon played Russian roulette as his shift ended early Saturday morning – and lost.

“If this fires, I’m dead,” fellow workers quoted Tumanon as saying each of the two times he pulled the trigger, case investigator Senior Police Officer 1 Eric Lazon said.

Except for the sound of a click, nothing happened the first time. But after pulling the trigger a second time, Tumanon dropped to the floor dead, a bullet embedded in his neck, Lazo said.

The shot and the sight of the fallen security guard sent fellow workers at the Mini Stop convenience store in Barangay (village) Kaligayahan, Quezon City, running out to the street.

Lazo said the security guard died instantly.

Store manager Angie Yumol, 22, said that she was with four male workers inside the store’s backroom where Tumanon shot himself in front of them.

Yumol said she could not think of any reason why Tumanon would want to kill himself.

The store manager said that the guard was supposed to head home when she arrived at 5:20 a.m. for her shift.

At that time, Yumol was fixing her hair when Tumanon, dressed in an undershirt, entered the backroom.

The assistant store manager, Eduardo Manahan, was also in the room when the guard asked for his service pistol, a .38-caliber revolver.

Manahan recalled that he retrieved the gun from a steel cabinet and checked that it was unloaded before handing it to Tumanon.

But Manahan said he saw Tumanon slip something inside the gun before pointing it to the right side of the neck, saying, “If this fires, I’m dead” in Filipino.

Alarmed after the first click, Manahan tried to grab the gun from Tumanon but the guard held on to the weapon.

“If this fires, I’m dead,” Tumanon said for a second time, and in an instant he was.