Fil-Am, 84, robbed, killed in Sudlon II

CEBU, Philippines - A Filipino-American octogenarian was killed in an apparent robbery inside his house in barangay Sudlon II located in the mountains of Cebu City early dawn yesterday.

The victim, Pedro Pantinople Kamelo, who would have turned 85 this Thursday, was found on his bed with a stab wound on the head.

The police suspect that the man, who is living off his pension from the United States, was killed during a robbery as his money and jewelry, as well as a gun, are missing.

Melecio Bacalso, 66, caretaker at the same time gardener of the victim, alleged that he went to the victim’s house at 6 a.m. yesterday to wake him up, which was what he did every morning.

Bacalso lives in a house beside that of the victim.

He said that since he could not go inside the gate, he tried calling Kamelo to wake him up.

Since Kamelo did not respond, Bacalso decided to instead go to the house of the victim’s brother-in-law, Domingo Balili, which is just a few meters away, to ask for assistance in waking up the victim as the gate was still locked.

Balili sent his son Al to accompany Bacalso as he had to attend to something.

Since they could not get in through the gate, Bacalso decided to climb up the fence and tried knocking at the window of the Kamelo’s bedroom and still got no reply.

When he checked the surroundings, he noticed that the front door was open, so he and Al went inside and found blood coming from the victim’s bedroom.

When they checked, they saw Kamelo already dead on his bed.

The victim sustained stab wounds on his head, on the right side of his face near his jaw, and had a cut above his lips.

“Pwerteng kuyawa nako oy. Wala gani ko ganiha mikaon pamahaw,” Bacalso said.

They saw a knife near the bedroom’s door but it was not stained with blood.

Joel Balili, another brother-in-law of the victim and brother of Domingo, suspected that the victim was robbed since the money, which he said amounted to P21,000 that was kept inside one of the drawers was missing.

The assorted pieces of jewelry, which Joel estimated to be more than P100,000, were also missing.

Bacalso said that the .45 caliber gun of the victim is also missing.

They found P11,000 cash among the scratch papers of the victim which Joel believed was part of the pension the victim received last month and was misplaced.

Joel told reporters yesterday that he accompanied the victim last Tuesday to withdraw the victim’s monthly pension from a bank in the city.

Kamelo reportedly withdrew P23,000 and from the amount spent P2,000 for medicine.

Joel said that he surmised that Kamelo still had P21,000 in his possession based on the amount spent for medicine.

Bacalso, who alleged that he did not hear any commotion or strange sounds from the victim’s house the previous night, said that the last time he saw the victim was at around 5 p.m. last Saturday.

The victim allegedly employed five construction workers to work on the façade of his house. The workers stopped their work at 5 p.m. and so did Bacalso, he said.

The victim was living alone since his wife and children are in the United States. He has been living in barangay Sudlon for more than a year already.

“One year na nako siya gi-amohan. Mipuyo siya diri kay ganahan lagi daw siya mag-farming,” Bacalso said.

The case is jointly being investigated by the Homicide and Theft and Robbery Sections of the Cebu City Police Office.

The team has initially picked up the five construction workers to take their finger prints and as a standard operating procedure in the investigation, PO3 Celso Seville of the TRS said.

Seville said they also invited Joel for questioning.

 Joel, the policeman added, was the one who went to their office at 9 a.m. yesterday and reported the incident.

“Since wala pa ma’y matumbok na accused karon, right now, everybody is a suspect,” Seville said. —/NLQ (THE FREEMAN)