Kin mourn loss of loved ones in Davao bombing

Residents place flowers at the makeshift memorial at the site of Friday night’s explosion in Davao City on Sept. 3. AP

DAVAO CITY—Evelyn Sobrecarey, 49, was scheduled to graduate from a physical therapy course she had been taking for months. But instead of joining her classmates march and get their certificates at the Davao Doctor’s Hospital, her body lay in state at the Cosmopolitan funeral parlor here.

Evelyn, who had been working at the Roxas Boulevard night market as a trainee masseuse, was among the 10 people killed on the spot when a bomb exploded at the massage section of the night market late Friday night.

Her husband, Insp. Angelito Sobrecarey, immediately dialed her phone as soon as he heard about the explosion but no one replied. Sensing that something was wrong, he asked for a leave from his superior to look for his wife. His search eventually led him to the Cosmopolitan morgue, where Evelyn’s body was among the six to have arrived from the explosion site.

In an adjoining chapel of the funeral parlor, where the family of another victim, Christian Denver Serrano Reyes, 26, were mourning, a neighbor produced a video he downloaded from the social media only minutes after the blast. It showed the bloodied body of Evelyn, lying among the fallen chairs and other bodies, only a few minutes after the explosion.

Christian Denver, who just finished having a massage with his wife, was just standing up when the explosion happened, said Donato Reyes, his father. “They were hit while they were leaving,” he said. His wife is still recuperating at the hospital but Christian Denver did not make it. His body was found only a few steps away from Evelyn’s. He left behind three children, aged 12, 10 and five.

The explosion was so strong, it shook the foundation of the houses living in the area, observed Abelyn Abellana, who lived on nearby Padre Gomez Street.

“This explosion is very personal, we cannot just say it happens to other people, all of us, in one way or another, are connected to it, all our lives are intertwined in this event,” said Ruby Lora, who sells grilled pork belly branded as Liempolicious at the night market. She said one of those who got killed, the 17-year-old student Kristelle Nicolasora Decolongon, was a regular customer. “That’s why, the event is very personal to us,” she said. “She still visited us the other night,” Lora said. She said the explosion was so strong she felt the whole area shake.

“Right now, our immediate concern is, will the night market, as it was before the explosion, still manage to come back?” she said. “For people whose main livelihood came from the market, it would be very hard.”

She said that the city government was encouraging them to go back to their places right the night after the explosion but some of them are still anxious about it. “Even among us, it feels so weird,” Lora said. “The thing only happened last night.”

But Mags Maglana, a development management consultant who also writes a column for a Davao newspaper, said it was good that Mayor Sara Duterte had immediately gathered people at the explosion site, to send a message to the perpetrators that Davao City was not cowed. “We will not allow the perpetrators to deny us this space,” Maglana said. “Aside from courage, what we need is faith.”

Over a thousand people gathered right at the place where the explosion happened, treading the place where people just lost their lives, offering flowers and candles, as if reclaiming the space snatched from them by terror.

Mayor Duterte also refused to be cowed. Her message for the memorial of the blast victims accompanied the wreath of white orchids and anthuriums delivered at the site where the bombs exploded. The message read, “The measure of terrorism’s success is how long does it take for the victims to stand up. We will stand up now.”