Grenades found in vacant lot in Mandaue

Playing violent video games saved the life of three children in Mandaue City yesterday afternoon.

Police yesterday rushed to barangay Looc to defuse and recover three grenades that were accidently found by three children who were scavenging for scrap in a vacant lot.

Jose Darwin Garciano, 12 admonished his friends and warned them not to touch the grenade as it could detonate and instantly kill them.

“Kabalo ko nga muboto ‘to kay kakita ko sa game sa Counter-Strike,” Garciano told Cebu Daily News.

(I knew that it will explode as I’ve seen it in a Counter-Strike game.)

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter video game popular among gamers. Players may join in as terrorists or counter-terrorists and are equipped with a wide array of weapons from handguns to high-powered rifles to explosives such as grenades.

Controversy

Counter-Strike faced controversy when critics claimed that the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre and the 2008 shooting in Northern Illinois University in the US had been trained to kill by playing the video game.

In 2007, a Brazilian court prohibited the sale of Counter-Strike and ordered the withdrawal of the video game from all stores.

Brazilian judge Carlos Alberto Simões de Tomaz ordered the ban as the games “bring imminent stimulus to the subversion of the social order, attempting against the democratic and rightful state and against the public safety.”

Last week, US Sen. Dianne Feinstein said game publishers need to make voluntary actions to avoid glorifying guns and violence following the Newtown elementary school massacre in December

The grenades in the Mandaue City vacant lot were discovered when one of the children, Elmer Rigodo, heard a “crack” when he landed on a plastic biscuit container after doing a cartwheel stunt.

12-year-old Garciano said it was Jerson Salili who opened the plastic jar and took the bronze-colored grenade out.

Not knowing that what he found was an explosive, Salili tried to polish the metal object by rubbing it on the soil.

Garciano immediately admonished his friend and warned him that it could explode.

“Pero na-kuryoso lang mi kay kato pa mi kita ug mga paboto mao amoa lang usa gi-gunit-gunitan,” he said.

(We got curious as it’s our first time to see what an explosive looks like.)

The children sought help from an adult resident who was passing by the area. The resident then relayed the information to his brother who is a member of the Lapu-Lapu City Barangay Intelligence Network (BIN).

Auqelio Ardena Jr., the BIN member, rushed to the scene near the Elba Building, and secured the grenades by placing them in a rubber tire before calling the police..

He however couldn’t get through the police telephone line prompting him to seek help from Cebu Daily News. A Special Weapons and Tactics team from the Mandaue City Police Office led by Insp. Diosdado Malazarte arrived on the scene and placed a bomb blanket over the grenades.

SPO1 Jodiel Orcullo, a bomb technician, said the children were lucky that the grenades did not explode when one of them played with it.

“Kung tan-awon man gud ning rifle grenade, mura ni ug rocket ug missile sa jud ug porma,” he said.

Malazarte said they will search the vacant lot to make sure that it’s free of explosives. /Jucell Marie P. Cuyos and Norman V Mendoza