FIVE days of going without food and sleep might have caused 34-year-old Louie Bontowal to black out, then stab and wound a street vendor in Tabada Market, barangay Mambaling, Cebu City last Monday.
Bontowal’s former live-in partner dismissed allegations that jealousy caused Bontowal to attack the vendor during a phone interview with Cebu Daily News yesterday.
“I do not know the woman he stabbed. He might have blacked out. Since I left him, he reportedly had not been eating and had been missing sleep,” she told CDN in Cebuano.
After 13 years, she said she left Bontowal five days before the attack because of his tendency to become over possessive of her.
After she left him, their neighbors would look after the despondent Bontowal, who didn’t eat nor sleep. Then last Monday, he slipped away unnoticed and ended up in Mambaling where he attacked a vendor with a knife. The vendor, Lyneth Enjambre, survived the attack and is recuperating in a government hospital.
Bontowal, who was mobbed by bystanders after the attack, also suffered cuts and bruises in the head and body. He was unconscious when brought to the hospital for treatment.
Yesterday, he told his former partner who visited him at the hospital that he had blacked out and he didn’t know that he had attacked somebody.
Senior Insp. Regino Maramag Jr., Mambaling police chief, said in a phone interview yesterday that despite the suspect’s allegations, he is still under arrest and charges will be filed against him.