Midnight swimmer bumps into corpse floating on Manila Bay

MANILA, Philippines – A 20-year-old fisherman got the scare of his life three days before Halloween when he bumped into a corpse bobbing in the water as he went for a night swim on Manila Bay around midnight Friday, police said.

Mark Jomel Montino, of Estrada Street in San Andres Bukid, Manila, had gone for a dip near the breakwater off the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the pier for Bataan-bound vessels when he had his encounter with the macabre.

He butted heads with the floating corpse when he surfaced from a dive beneath the waves.

After getting over his shock, the terrified fisherman immediately swam ashore and reported his encounter with the dead man floating face down in the water to policemen, who sought the help of other fishermen in bringing the body in.

Manila Police District homicide section investigators described the body as that of a man between 45 and 50 years old, five-foot-five inches tall, of medium build, and clad only in a pair of brown short pants.

Police Officer 2 Bernardo Cayabyab said that the unidentified man’s body bore no external injury but had blood oozing from the nose. A piece of steel, apparently a tool for collecting mussels, was tied with a nylon cord to the man’s left hand and several mussels where found in his pockets.

Cayabyab told the Philippine Dailyu Inquirer that the man was known to  people who lived nearby as a mussel diver but no one could provide more information about his identity.

The investigator theorized that the man could have suffered leg cramps while diving for mussels and drowned.  The body was taken to the St. Yvan funeral parlor for autopsy.