Drunken row: Laborer kills coworker with backhoe bucket

A laborer died after he was hit repeatedly by the bucket of a backhoe being operated by his 19-year-old coworker on Saturday in Quezon City.

Placido San Juan, 39, suffered multiple abrasions and fractured bones on his left arm and ribs. He was declared dead on arrival at Chinese General Hospital and Medical Center around 3:30 a.m.

Just hours before, San Juan was having drinks with backhoe operator Bernard Pepito and another colleague when they started arguing inside E. Rodriguez High School campus on Angelo Street, Barangay N.S. Amoranto, the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) said in a report.

The victim went to his quarters to get a knife while Pepito ran toward the backhoe and started operating the machine, said Chief Insp. Elmer Monsalve, head of the homicide section of QCPD’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit.

Pepito, meanwhile, claimed that he had no intention of harming the victim and he was merely defending himself.

“I operated the backhoe and used the horn to ask help from the foreman but it was so dark and I didn’t notice he was there and he got hit by the bucket of the machine,” he said.

After the victim was hit by the bucket, he got up. But Pepito, using the backhoe, pressed him up against a fence made of galvanized iron sheets.

The suspect was immediately apprehended and taken to the QCPD headquarters in Camp Karingal. Pepito owned up to the crime and faces a charge of homicide, Monsalve added.