The window of a toilet cubicle at the Asian College of Technology building where the Grade 12 student jumped off. (CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON)
A senior high school student jumped off the seventh floor of a college building in Barangay Kalubihan, Cebu City, on Thursday afternoon.
The student, a 17-year old girl, was rushed to the hospital but was later pronounced dead.
Chief Insp. Jacinto Mandal, head of the Carbon Police Station, said the student was reportedly going through family problems.
“We can say that this is alleged suicide. But we’re still getting facts.”
The girl landed on the ground at the back of the building.
In a statement, Dr. Stephen Descallar, president of the Asian College of Technology (ACT) where the incident happened, said they were shocked with what happened.
Based on their inquiry, Descallar said the girl displayed “erratic behavior” while attending class prior to the incident.
The student was supposed to be meeting with counselors along with her parents when she asked to go to the comfort room, locked herself inside one of the cubicles and jumped out of the small window of the cubicle at the seventh floor of the ACT building and crashed on the ground at past 4 p.m. Thursday.
Earlier yesterday, “[she] even tried to climb out of the classroom’s window” but “was restrained by the teacher who then called for the guidance counselor, Marcus Agonia, Jr., who later fetched the student and brought her to the counseling office,” Descallar’s statement reads.
According to Descallar, the girl admitted to the counselor that she was allegedly physically, verbally and psychologically abused by her parents at home.
The victim even said, “Gikapoy nako sa akong kinabuhi kay puros lang pain (I’m tired of my life because it’s full of pain),” the school official said.
Descallar said Agonia called the student’s mother and recommended to the parent to take her daughter to a clinical psychologist.
He said they also learned the girl had suicide attempts in the past, including ingesting a dozen packs of MSG at one time and a dozen tablets of antibiotics and paracetamol in another.
When the girl realized that her mother had been summoned to the school, it was then that she asked to go to the toilet.
“And things quickly happened in seconds as she slipped out of the [CR] cubicle’s window,” Descallar said.
The emergency staff who responded to the incident tried to revive the girl. The girl’s parents, who were by then in the school premises, decided to bring their daughter to the hospital but she failed to make it.