Victim was a scholar who took out trash for cash

He wasn’t  the valedictorian, but Rowell Cruz posthumously drew the most poignant applause during   Recognition Day at Signal Village National High School in Taguig City yesterday.

“He was our graduating student who died on Tuesday,” the emcee said of Cruz, the honor student who was shot dead by two men who grabbed his cell phone and PlayStation Portable (PSP) gaming console outside his house.

Three days after the killing, Taguig police presented two suspects: Bobby Babago, 25, and Arnold Tagalog, 30.

The owner of the motorcycle used in the robbery led investigators to the two suspects, said Taguig police chief  Senior Supt. Tomas Apolinario. ‘’We believe our case is strong. We have six eyewitnesses and we recovered from them the gun used in the incident,” Apolinario told reporters.

During the program, Cruz’s sister Kristine tearfully received the certificate and medals commending her brother for finishing at the top of his section with a general average of 91.10. Cruz, 16 (not 15 as earlier reported), would have graduated first honorable mention on Tuesday.

“He was such a sweet brother. He had big dreams. He wanted to be a seaman but we could not afford it. He opted instead for a computer-related course which would have been funded by a scholarship he got from SM Foundation,” she told the Inquirer after the program.

Cruz was never told that he was graduating with honors. “It’s supposed to be a surprise. He’s supposed to be told about it only today. I feel guilty that I did tell to him that he was Top One (of his section),” said his class adviser, Mylene Vallejo.

Kristine recalled that Rowell, the youngest in a brood of four, was a cheerful teenager, quite tall for his age at 5’7”, who made a lot of friends in the neighborhood, from the elders to the kindergarten pupils.

“He was also independent-minded. While my mother Consolacion (a 62-year-old caregiver in Cyprus) would send us money, he never asked for baon (allowance) from my father. Instead, he earned his pocket money by collecting our neighbor’s trash, for which they would pay him in coins. He would earn P100 or more a day just doing that,” she said.

Showing an early knack for electronics, “he once built a speaker system all by himself,” Kristine added. Vallejo also noted that the boy particularly excelled in math and physics.

But all that youthful promise suddenly came to a violent end that Tuesday night.