Cop’s search for wife leads to city morgue

ALLAN NAWAL/ JEOFFREY MAITEM/ INQUIRER MINDANAO

DAVAO CITY—Evelyn Sobrecarey, 49, was scheduled to graduate from a government-accredited physical therapy course.

She was working at the Roxas Avenue night market as a trainee masseuse when a bomb ripped through the area on Friday night, killing her and 13 others.

When her husband, Insp. Angelito Sobrecarey, heard the news about the attack, he dialed her number and started looking for her when he got no reply.

The search led to the Cosmopolitan morgue, where his wife’s body was taken, along with five others.

A neighbor showed to a reporter a video he downloaded from  social media only minutes after the blast. It showed the bloodied body of Evelyn, lying among  tumbled chairs and other bodies.

In an adjoining chapel of the funeral parlor, the family of another victim, Christian Denver Serrano Reyes, 26, was mourning.

Reyes, who just finished having a massage with his wife, was just standing up when the explosion happened, said his father Donato.

“They were hit while they were leaving,” he said. The wife was wounded and was recuperating in the hospital.

Reyes’ body was found only a few steps from Evelyn’s. He left behind three children, aged 12, 10 and five.

“This explosion is very personal, we cannot just say it happens to other people, all of us, in one way or another, are connected to it, all our lives are intertwined in this event,” said Ruby Lora, who sells grilled pork at the market.

She said one of those killed, 17-year-old student Kristelle Nicolasora Decolongon, was a regular customer.

“That’s why, the event is very personal to us,” she said. “She  visited us just the other night,” Lora said.

“Right now, our immediate concern is, will the night market, as it was before the explosion, still manage to come back?” she said. “For people whose main livelihood come from the market, it would be very hard.”