Body found in Tagba-o, Cebu City a salvage victim?

Police cordon the area in a remote area of Barangay Tagba-o, Cebu City where a body of an unidentified man was found on Oct. 3, 2019. |CDND Photo/Paul Lauro

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The still unidentified man found dead in Sitio Cab-asan, Barangay Tagba-o, a mountain village of Cebu City, may have been a salvage victim.

This was the observation of Tagba-o Barangay Councilman Fernando Arcilla, who joined the police in the investigation to identify the body found  in his village on Wednesday, October 3.

Arcilla said that residents in Cab-asan noticed a black van passed through the sitio’s road at around 9 p.m. of Tuesday, October 1, 2019.

The body was found at past 11 a.m. of Wednesday, October 2, 2019 along the Cab-asan road with the man’s feet tied with a rope.

The man was wearing black shirt and red shorts.  Police estimated the victim to be around 30 years old and weighed around 70 to 80 kilos.

The man was most likely shot to death, as the Scene of the Crime Operatives (SOCO) found multiple gunshot wounds in the different parts of his body, Arcilla said.

The police found no blood stains around the body, which led them to suspect that the man was dumped in the area.

“Murag wala man ni siya gipatay diri. Gilabay ra ni kay wala ra may dugo sa palibot. (I think he was not killed here. He was thrown here because there are no blood stains around the body),” said Arcilla.

The man’s body was brought to Rolling Hills Funeral Homes in Mandaue City pending identification.

Arcilla said no resident in Tagba-o was able to identify the victim, and based on the witnesses’ accounts of a ‘suspicious’ black van passing through the area, the man might have been a salvage vicitim.

Talamban Police urged families with missing members to check if the unidentified man was their missing kin./elb