We hope the Cordova police arrest soon the two assailants who shot and killed a married couple as they rode a motorcycle with their 5-year-old daughter in barangay Day-as, Cordova town last Sunday evening.
The little girl escaped injury. She would have been killed too if not for the intervention of a neighbor, who shouted at the perpetrators as they fled with the motorcycle and a bag supposedly containing P200,000 in cash.
According to some quarters, the suspects were neighbors who had friction with the slain wife, with whom they had an earlier confrontation.
What the little girl had to witness, and her future as an orphan is a tragedy that should spur law enforcers to ensure that, at the very least, let justice be done for this broken family.
After public condemnation wanes, the welfare of the crime victims and their loved ones is easily overlooked.
In this case, the girl asked a barangay tanod who passed by to bring her to her grandmother. She was brought first to the Cordova police precinct and then turned over to a social welfare officer.
For now, the day’s violence would be a blur for the child. Witnesses said she didn’t cry or shout. At first, she just lay on the ground embracing her fallen parents. She acted quite calmly.
The trauma of having witnessed the death of parents and the deeper loss of family will sink in.
We hope relatives will come to her side quickly, and that social workers who took immediate custody of her have the compassion and tender skill to conduct a proper psycho-social debriefing.
Initial reports said the father, who worked as a liaison of a construction company, had been entrusted to carry a sum of money for the purchase of supplies. Police suspect his movements and his assignment had been watched and monitored by the perpetrators.
One report said the little girl recognized the two perpetrators from photos shown to her. That fact alone exposes her to danger.
Good police work would be able to establish motive, execution of a crime and identification of suspects from various evidence that does not require relying on the sole testimony of a vulnerable little girl to identify her parents’ killers.
Spare her that.
Cordova town isn’t a large territory, so police should be able to locate suspects for questioning soon.
We hope Sunday evening’s heinous crime isn’t explained away by Cordova Mayor Adelino Sitoy as an isolated case. Let it close with the identification and capture of the men responsible for this deed.