Bicol mayor offers reward to help solve Pasig woman’s slay

Mabel Cama, a bank employee, had dreamed of becoming a flight attendant. —PHOTO FROM MABEL CAMA’S FACEBOOK PAGE

A P50,000 reward has been offered to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest of the suspects in the murder of a 22-year-old bank employee, whose body was found on Sunday near her home Pasig City.

The cash reward is coming from the mayor of Paracale, Camarines Norte, who also owns the bus company where the victim’s father works.

Mayor Lourdes Briguerra has offered the money in the hope of finding leads in the case of Mabel Cama, Eastern Police District director Chief Supt. Romulo Sapitula said on Wednesday.

Cama’s half-naked body was found in an abandoned building around 100 meters away from the compound where she lived on Ortigas Avenue Extension, Barangay Rosario.

Her lower extremities were burned, a sign that the perpetrator tried to dispose of the body, police said. Found next to the body were her shorts and underwear.

Hours prior to the discovery of the body, residents noticed a fire in the abandoned building and put it out using water drawn from a nearby ditch, said Sapitula, who inspected the crime scene on Wednesday along with an investigation team led by the Pasig chief, Senior Supt. Orlando Yebra Jr.

The EPD chief disclosed that they have come up with three more persons of interest in the case, bringing the total to five.

The first two were Randy Oavenada, a truck driver from the same compound where the victim lived; and Diolan Asibuchi, a mechanic who Oavenada said was the person he saw standing behind the victim when she was texting outside the compound’s gate at 11:43 p.m. on Friday.

Oavenada had also claimed seeing Asibuchi tearing up carton boxes near the crime scene on Saturday.

The EPD withheld the names of the three other persons of interest.

Meanwhile, Cama’s mother Charito, a clothes merchant in Camarines Norte, has arrived in Pasig.

“She had big plans for the family,” Charito said of her slain daughter, the fourth in a brood of six.

Cama was recently hired by a Makati City-based bank and had only
started working there for a week when she was killed. She lived with some family members at the terminal-garage of Mega Bus Line, which is owned by the Paracale mayor and where Cama’s father Reynaldo has been employed as an electrician for a decade.

“We hope to obtain justice soon,’’ Reynaldo said. “Never have we
thought that this would happen to any of my children. We have been living here for more than 10 years. Our neighbors are like family to us.”

Cama’s remains will be brought to their native Paracale on Friday. The bus company is shouldering the transport, but the victim’s family is still in need of financial assistance, Charito said. Burial is set for Sunday.