Maxi had lived only for five months at the house her mother bought for her in Barangay Busay, Cebu City, when the suspect identified as Reynante Mambiar supposedly chose to victimize her next.
Mambiar was implicated in a series of burglaries in the area and had been detained for illegal drug possession based on the accounts of barangay and police officials.
If that’s not damning evidence, then Mambiar’s confession that he killed Maxi may be sufficient to lock him up in jail for the remainder of his natural life, which is what Maxi’s father Alex Bolongaita wants.
“He (Mambiar) is an animal. Any normal person cannot do that (what he did to my daughter). I want him to live. I want him to suffer. I don’t want him dead. I want him to live and feel the pain. That’s what I want,” Alex was quoted by reporters as saying.
Maxi’s murder recalls another similar incident two years ago when college freshman Karen Kaye Montebon was found dead at her home in Lapu-Lapu City, also in September.
Her suspected killer, Ruben Gerongco Fernandez, was found shot dead on an islet in Bohol province a week later on Sept. 24. Fast forward two years later, and Mambiar may count himself lucky that he survived a gunshot wound after a brief tussle with his victim.
When Cebu-based residents got wind of Maxi’s murder, not a few who may be friends or not even remotely related to the grieving family cried for blood, and it’s hard not to see why.
When one is greeted with the horrifying tragedy of a loved one’s murder at the hands of someone like Mambiar, who killed without hesitation to steal valuables, any thoughts of due process fly out the window and the immediate instinct is to demand and exact vengeance.
At the same time, we think whether Barangay Busay officials could have done a better job of securing their community from the likes of Mambiar, a suspected drug user who managed to commit more crimes despite being jailed at least once.
Apparently not so well, as Maxi’s untimely death had shown, but while we can blame the barangay officials and the police to our hearts’ content, it won’t bring Maxi back nor serve to console the family and friends whom she had been forcibly left behind.
What can be done is to better secure our homes from robbers and predators by calling on our barangay officials to designate tanods to work with police to patrol and keep our streets safe from these criminals.
A vigilant, watchful community backed by a proactive (read: by the book, not murderous) police remains the most effective and viable deterrent against crime.