A tricycle driver faces a charge of homicide following his arrest on Monday night, exactly a week after he shot dead a woman whom he had an argument with when they accidentally bumped each other as they were walking on the street.
Ronnie Rodriguez, a 23-year-old tricycle driver living at Parola Compound in Tondo, Manila, was picked up by the police in his house after witnesses positively identified him as the man who shot and killed Robysita Sacramento.
Sacramento, 28, an employee of 168 Mall Supermart, was walking on C. M. Recto Avenue in Binondo at around 7:30 p.m. on October 3 when she accidentally bumped Rodriguez.
The two argued and Rodriguez shot the victim four times. The shooting was witnessed by Sacramento’s coworker, Liezel Torremonia, who later helped the police track down Rodriguez, along with other witnesses.
When interviewed by reporters following his arrest, Rodriguez, who admitted that he was drunk at the time of the shooting, was unrepentant.
“She was the one who bumped me and yet she had the gall to get mad at me. She even hit me on the head with her bag,” Rodriguez said in Filipino, referring to the victim.
According to him, he was on his way to Divisoria to show his friends a “paltik” (home-made gun) he had just bought from a pawnshop.
He claimed it was Sacramento who bumped him, with her shoulder hitting him in the face. “Instead of apologizing, she got mad, yelled at me, hit me and even taunted me. She said, ‘Are you going to fight back? What are you going to do about it?’” Rodriguez added.
He said that as they were arguing, he started getting angry although he stressed that the thought of shooting her with his brand-new firearm did not cross his mind until she left in a huff and came back with two men.
“That’s when I shot her. The two men fled when they saw I had a gun. I continued to shoot at them as they ran,” he admitted.
For Senior Inspector Joselito de Ocampo, chief of the Manila Police District’s homicide division, the victim’s reaction may have been triggered by her suspicion that Rodriguez was trying to hit on her.
“She lost her temper because she may have felt that he was trying to feel her up when he bumped her,” Ocampo said.