Flooded basement yields body

The body of a call center agent was found floating in the basement of an unfinished building in Makati City on Monday, three days after he was last seen by family and friends.

Lorenzo Peña, 22, a resident of Sun Valley Subdivision in Parañaque City, was found dead at No. 3 Hernandez St., Barangay San Lorenzo Village, around about 3:30 p.m. of June 27.

The daughter of the building’s caretaker told the police that she saw a man, later identified as Peña, enter the compound and the building’s stockroom on Friday, June 24, about 9:30 p.m.

SPO2 Rico Caramat, the case investigator from the Makati police, said Regine Dioleste alerted barangay officials when she heard Peña seemingly in a fit of rage inside the stockroom.

The village security force of San Lorenzo searched the building  up to the third level basement but did not find him.

Percival Dioleste, the caretaker, found an ID in the stockroom and called the number indicated in the contact details.

The call was picked up by Peña’s father, Arthur, who together with barangay officials arrived on Monday and found his son’s body floating and decomposing in the water that covered sections of the fifth level basement.

The victim still had his two cell phones, a  wallet containing cash, several ID cards and a fan knife. One of the IDs indicated that he worked for Alorica Inc. at Alphaland Building on Edsa, Makati.

An autopsy was performed to confirm if there was foul play.

The victim was also a mountaineer and climb organizer. According to his friends interviewed by the Inquirer, he was supposed to attend a market networking event on Sunday and that he went out on a date with a commercial model on the night he was last seen alive.