The bodies of two siblings were retrieved a few hours after they went missing last Thursday by rescuers from the Biasong River in Barangay Bonbon, a mountain barangay in Cebu City.
Nolasco Reyes, a neighbor, first found the body of Jesan Perez, 5, at about 10 p.m. on Thursday or at least five hours after she and her brother Walter went missing.
Three hours later, rescuers from the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council found the body of Walter, 7.
“Kanang lalaki, gisawom na gyod na didto sa lawom kaayo nga bahin sa tubig (We retrieved the boy’s body in the deeper part of the river basin),” said PO1 Juniel Rabago, who lives in the area.
Maria Danhelen Billeta Perez, the victims’ mother, told police that she and her common-law husband went to Sitio Biasong about 3 p.m. on Thursday to extract edible white meat from coconuts that they can sell.
The Perez family lives in nearby Sitio Loksoon.
Maria Danhelen said that since her two kids later caught up with them, she gave them young coconut meat to eat while they waited for them to finish their work.
At about 5 p.m., she said, the children asked permission to leave the work area, so they could urinate.
She said she started looking for them after noticing they had not returned for quite a while, said PO3 Winston Ybañez of the Homicide Section of the Cebu City Police Office.
Ybañez said that Maria Danhelen got worried when she saw her children’s slippers and a toy floating on the river basin’s stagnant water.
The Biasong River basin is located inside a cave.
Ybañez said that people in the area believe that the children may have slipped while urinating in the area and fell into the deep waters of the river basin.
City disaster rescuers later found Walter’s body at 1 a.m.
PO1 Rabago said the mother kept blaming herself for the death of her two children.
“They were just there to gather copra, and failed to watch over their children, who visited them,” he said in Cebuano.
The remains of the two children are now in a Cebu City funeral parlor.
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