The second high-profile, drug-related parricide case in less than a month occurred late last Thursday when a 16-year-old boy was pointed to by police as the primary suspect in the murder of his pregnant mother, Virgindina Bantilan.
Autopsy results showed that the boy’s sister, Geraldine, was also shot in the forehead at close range while Virgindina was stabbed many times in their home in barangay Nalaad, Naga City, south Cebu.
The teenage boy earlier told police that he bludgeoned his mother’s head with a .357 revolver and hit his sister’s mouth to keep her from crying for help before he stabbed them.
The boy admitted that he was using shabu at the time of the violence, just as 25-year-old Christian Dalangin did when he killed his mother Rubirosa by slitting her throat with a knife in their home in barangay Mambaling, Cebu City, late last month.
After Rubirosa’s death, we pointed out that Christian alone did not commit the crime, because his rage would not have been murderous had he been free from the bondage of drugs that came to hold him because of the black trade of drug lords, pushers and the bad example of other addicts.
We said that such a situation would have been prevented if authorities responsible for defending people, especially the young, against the scourge of drugs, like the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Philippine National Police worked harder to bring the full weight of the law down on illegal drugs syndicates instead of tolerating compromises with the big fish.
The same calls stand with the deaths of Virgindina, the unnamed baby in her womb and Geraldine, and we do not find fault with the law against juvenile offenders for being rather lenient on children who commit crime. The boy suspect may still be held responsible, his age notwithstanding, if it can be proven in court that he committed the acts of violence with discernment.
That’s where discernment on the part of the court is necessary, because drugs alter a person’s consciousness, let alone damage his capacity to discern right from wrong.
Still, anyone who has committed a crime while high on drugs, at the very least, has to be made to do some form of penitence if only for him to realize the utter folly of despair and the atrocity of having taken to drugs to escape from harsh reality.
We leave the courts, law enforcers and social workers to handle the cases of Christian and the teenage boy Bantilan, but call on everyone in society to be kinder and more compassionate to wayward youngsters.
Let us not underestimate the power of the love and attention that we as parents, teachers, guardians and elders give to kids at home, in school and in the streets .
Love and attention could very well be our children’s only mantle of protection against the lure of a fantastic reality that getting high on drugs offers them.
Without these, the carnage will continue. Already there are too many boys sniffing rugby in dark street corners and under bridges in the night.
The kindness of elders may well be their only chance at turning a new leaf.