Police cut the rope that PO3 Eleazar Tero used to hang himself three days after murder and arbitrary detention charges were filed against him and four other policemen for the killing of Lorna Sazo. —ROBERT DEJON
CARIGARA, Leyte — The family of a 64-year-old woman who had been found dead and tied with packaging tape to display her killing as warning for other would-be criminals expressed rage at the brutality that befell her allegedly in the hands of policemen in Ormoc City.
Lorna Soza was arrested by Ormoc police for allegedly stealing a mobile phone worth P13,000 in August from a store at a mall in the Leyte city.
Her family admitted she was suffering from kleptomania, a disorder characterized by the inability to resist the urge to steal.
Lorna had been detained without charges despite begging for forgiveness from the store owner and paying for the stolen phone with all she had in her wallet — P10,300 in cash.
But five days after, Lorna was removed from her cell and forced into a police vehicle.
The next day, she was found dead in the town of Cananga, also in Leyte province, with a gunshot wound in the face, her face covered by packaging tape and her hands tied with packaging tape, too.
Suicide
A complaint for murder and arbitrary detention had been filed against five Ormoc police officers.
But one of the officers was found hanging in a room of his unfinished house in the village of Curva in Ormoc on Sept. 27, three days after the complaint was filed by the Kananga police.
PO3 Eleazar Tero, former intelligence officer of Station 1 of the Ormoc police, was found dead hanging in the room with a nylon rope tied around his neck.
Tero had been charged along with Chief Insp. Omar Cartalla, Ormoc police Station 1 chief, and Ormoc policemen PO2 Ernie Clemencio, PO1 Ritchie Sy and PO1 Ryan Refuerzo.
Lorna, a native of Carigara, was in Ormoc to sell clothes. Her sister, Constantina, said the family started to worry when they stopped hearing from her.
Lorna didn’t know how to use a cell phone and would ask someone to either call or text Constantina or son, Martin, to tell them of her whereabouts.
Constantina said Martin got a call from a certain Janet on Aug. 24, telling him about the body of a woman in her 60s that was found in Kananga and buried in the town’s public cemetery.
It’s my mom
Distraught, Martin immediately went to Kananga to verify the information, Constantina said.
The Kananga health office showed Martin the photo of the body of the woman covered in packaging tape. It was his mother.
On Aug. 25, Constantina and her other siblings went to Kananga to exhume Lorna’s remains and bring her home.
“All we want now is justice be served to her,” Constantina said.
“She was brutally murdered. She was shot at the back of her head,” Constantina added, citing the autopsy report.
She said they were angry at how Lorna, a diabetic dependent on insulin shots and suffering from hypertension, was killed.
Constantina said her sister took the phone because she could not help it being a kleptomaniac.
“The amount of the phone was too small,” Constantina said. “We can afford to buy that,” she said.