‘Emilyn, we love you very much’

Family and friends of Emilyn Villanueva say their final goodbye as she is laid to rest at Lourdes Cemetery on Sunday afternoon. —KIMBERLY DELA CRUZ

Dressed in black shirts bearing the message, “Justice for Emilyn,” the family and friends of the 15-year-old girl who died after a bullet hit her on the head on New Year’s Eve accompanied her to her final resting place on Sunday.

“We want the real shooter arrested and charged,” Linda, the teenager’s grandmother, told the Inquirer. “We don’t believe what the police said. We believe she was the victim of a stray bullet.”

Emilyn Villanueva was watching a fireworks display outside her house in Malabon City at 11:45 p.m. on Dec. 31 when she suddenly fell to the ground, blood gushing from a head wound.

For days she lingered in a coma, the bullet having damaged 50 percent of her brain, particularly the parts responsible for speech, motion and other critical functions.

The girl who was a scholar and had dreamt of being a chef would need a miracle to survive, doctors told her parents.

Emilyn, however, passed away at 6:10 p.m. on Jan. 4, hours after her mother, Marilyn Villanueva, told God in the chapel at Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center: “If it’s Your will, then I’m letting her go.”

As the funeral procession left San Bartolome Church following the final Mass on Sunday, a street-sweeper watching the mourners deliberately smashed a glass bottle. “This is part of tradition. It is to prevent deaths like this from ever happening to anyone again,” he said.

Emilyn’s father, Emil Calano, was somber while her mother could not stop crying. Her sobs, as well as those of the other mourners, were muted although their faces were wracked with pain and sorrow.

They waved off members of the media who were present at the funeral. “Please, not now. I have this very heavy feeling in my chest,” Calano told them.

Marilyn remained inconsolable as she waited for the funeral workers to load her daughter’s coffin on the funeral car. Clasped to her chest was a frame holding her daughter’s picture. At San Bartolome Church, she cried and stared at her daughter’s remains, caressing the coffin’s glass top all the while.

Her husband, on the other hand, was calm. When the coffin was opened for the last time at Lourdes Cemetery, Calano kissed his firstborn and whispered: “Emilyn, we love you very much.”