Suicide at train station identified as woman with tumor

MANILA, Philippines—The woman who took her own life by throwing herself on the path of an oncoming train  at the Edsa station of the Light Rail Transit 1 on Thursday has been identified as a jobless woman long suffering from a tumor on the face.

Police said Lucy Aroma, 52, a jobless resident of Maricaban, Pasay City, was identified by her younger brothers Pio, Raymundo and Jose Aroma, who said she was depressed because of her tumor and poverty.

This illness “was her problem and we, her siblings, had tried to help her find a cure,” the brothers said in an affidavit executed at  the office of the Pasay police’s criminal investigation unit.

The three went to the Rizal Funeral Homes in Pasay City around 6 p.m. on Thursday after watching the news about a woman who committed suicide at the LRT station around 5:30 a.m.

The brothers had a hunch it was their sister in the news after she failed to come home that afternoon,  Chief Inspector Joey Goforth, head of the Pasay police’s investigation unit, said.

“They said their sister was depressed because of her illness and poverty,” he said.

The police believe  the woman committed suicide based on the video captured by the closed-circuit television camera at the LRT 1 station. It showed her jumping onto the tracks around four meters away from the oncoming train.

Seconds before the victim’s head was crushed by the wheels of the train, she was seen kneeling and gripping the tracks, Goforth said.

Although convinced that the woman killed herself, the police still charged the train operator identified as Anthony Atutubo with reckless imprudence resulting in homicide at the Pasay prosecutor’s office.

“We are leaving it up to the court to determine if it was suicide or not based on the… evidence we have gotten,” Goforth said.

Atutubo was  released from police custody, however, after Pasay prosecutor Josefina Muego issued a resolution on Friday saying there was  “insufficient cause to indict” him on a criminal offense.