Boy hurt playing with blasting cap

An 11-year-old grade four pupil landed in a hospital with burns in his face and different parts of his body after a blasting cap he was playing with exploded last Wednesday afternoon in sitio Canlawilao, barangay Dumalan, Dalaguete town.

PO3 Cleto Pia and PO1 Noeh Rosales said Maximo Dicdican, a grade four pupil of the Dumalan Elementary School, and his younger brother were given the blasting cap earlier found by his brother's classmate on the road on their way to school.

About 3 p.m. last Wednesday the victim took the blasting cap and paired it with a 1.5-volt battery, causing it to explode and burn him.

Dicdican was first brought to the Julio Cardinal Rosales Memorial Hospital in Dalaguete town but later transferred to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center here in Cebu City

Police have yet to determine where the blasting cap came from and plan to question the Ibalong Resources Development Corporation, a mining company run by a Taiwanese in the area, where eight miners were killed after a methane explosion in 2005. - Flor Z. Perolina/BRP