Illness may have driven BSP exec to kill self

A severe lung illness drove a 51-year-old supervisor at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to jump to his death from the 19th floor of the BSP building in Manila on Friday afternoon.

Felixberto Valdez, a supervising money counter assigned at the BSP Quezon City satellite office currency issue and retirement office, of Caloocan City, died instantly from the fall.

Manila Police District (MPD) homicide section investigators said the victim whose skull and bones were crushed due to impact of the fall was barely recognizable. He was only identified through an ID recovered from his trousers.

SPO1 Gerardo Rivera, case investigator, revealed that Valdez who was suffering from emphysema leaped from the 19th floor of the BSP building along A. Mabini Street cor. P. Ocampo Sts. in Malate, Manila, at around 2:40 p.m. on Friday in an apparent suicide.

Rivera said that before the incident, Valdez had asked his 25-year-old son Harrizon Isaiah to accompany him to the BSP building from their house in Caloocan City claiming he had to work off the sick leaves he had used up for the treatment of his lung illness at the Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP).

Father and son arrived at the BSP at around 1 p.m., after which Valdez left Harrizon outside the building while he entered the establishment.

Valdez then took the elevator to the 7th, 8th, or 9th floor from where he ascended the stairs to the 19th floor.

Upon reaching the 19th floor, Rivera said, Valdez jumped off and landed on a pile of steel pipes at a construction site in front of the Fort San Antonio Abad.

The steep fall shattered the BSP supervisor’s skull and bones.

Eduardo Eballar, a 26-year-old worker of the AG Araja Construction and Development Corp., saw Valdez falling from the building as he was looking up from the ground at the time while he was guiding a coworker on a scaffold.

Eballar told police investigators that Valdez landed near him, prompting him to immediately seek the help of BSP security personnel, who reported the incident to the police.

Rivera said that according to the victim’s son, his father had long been suffering from emphysema and had been receiving treatment at the LCP for the past two years.

His body was brought to the St. Harold funeral parlor for autopsy and safekeeping.