Pa upset over daughter's live-in partner shoots self

CEBU - A 50-year-old man shot himself dead in his bedroom the other day in Poro town, Camotes Island after he reportedly got depressed over a family problem.

Romeo Lorona, father of eight children, shot his head using a 357 revolver at around 3 p.m. inside his house in sitio Timarong, barangay Mabini.

His fifth child, 20-year-old Romar, narrated to The FREEMAN that it was his younger brother, Roy, 18, who woke him up after the latter heard a gunshot from the second storey of their house. The two rushed upstairs and found their father sprawled on the floor on a pool of blood.

After finding out that their father still had heart and pulse beats, they rushed him to the Ricardo Maningo Memorial Hospital with the help of their uncle who lives next door. But Romeo died along the way.

According to Romar, his father had a hard time accepting the fact that the common-law husband of their elder sister, Ana Loraine, Romeo’s second child, had impregnated another woman. Ana Loraine is said to be living in with the guy here in the city, and that they have a four-year-old daughter.

In the investigation conducted by Police Senior Insp. Alexander Ancao, Romar added that after his father learned of the situation, he was noticed to have been “staring blankly” and would “often either decline from taking his meals together with his children or purposely delay eating his meals.”

Prior to the incident, Romar said that their father gave them money and said “gamita na ang kwarta og tarong ha kay basin di na ta magkitakita”.

Romar thought that his father would be leaving again for Leyte where he worked as a mechanic.

Romar’s mother was in the city when the incident happened to fetch Ana Loraine and her granddaughter.

Responding policemen recovered a slug and an empty shell from inside Romeo’s bedroom. — Bentley Naire Luyong/MEEV   (THE FREEMAN)