Team’s last dive? Search for Gisela shifts to Camotes

Volunteer divers still find no trace of Bien Unido Mayor Gisela Boniel. Search and retrieval operations will be terminated on Friday, whether or not her body is found.
CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON

ONE more day.

The search for Gisela’s body will move to Camotes Island area where it will probably be their last dive.

Senior Supt. Rommel Cabagnot, Lapu-Lapu Police Station chief and the head of the search and retrieval operations, said he recommended to Police Regional Office in Central Visayas director Chief Supt. Noli Taliño, to end the search and retrieval operation, but Taliño extended it for another day.

Cabagnot said that they would scour the bottom of Camotes Sea in the hope of finding the remains of the mayor and complete their farthest area of the search operations.

Taliño said in a separate interview that the mayor’s body had not yet been found, but they would continue the operation because of the support of Boniel’s friends, family members and Bien Unido residents.

Meanwhile, Mikay Bendong, the sister of Mayor Boniel, who had just arrived from Dubai, said she had asked to join the Camotes Sea dive to search for her sister’s body.Mikay said that she was also a diver.

Cabagnot said he was hoping that they would find Gisela’s body especially since the victim’s sister would join the search.

Mikay said that she learned of her sister’s fate when she was working in Dubai, but she could not easily fly home because of her commitments there.

She added that they also had not told their mother, who is sick and paralyzed, of what happened to Gisela.