Husband at a loss how to tell kids their mom’s already dead

CEBU, Philippines - Still coping with the shock of receiving the news his wife allegedly committed suicide, the policeman husband of Police Officer 1 Heidi Garcia said yesterday he still has no idea what and how to tell the children.

“Wala ko kahibalo unsaon ni nako,” said PO1 Roy Benjie Garcia when asked if his children already knew about their mother’s demise.

He said the children have been asking him when he would go home and were inquiring about their “Maw-maw” (mother).

Heidi was reported to have shot herself in the chest inside the house of fellow policewoman PO1 Cyrelle Mae Bayate using Bayate’s gun.

Roy, who is assigned at Tagbilaran City Police Station’s Tourist Police Unit, said in an interview with Cebu media that he was shocked when he received a call past 9 a.m. last Friday informing him of his wife’s death.

He could not believe what he was told because minutes prior to receiving the call he was still exchanging text messages with his wife.

Heidi, Roy said, asked him how he was and their children and that she told him how much she loves him.

He said he answered her that he was still in the house but was about to report for duty and that he and the kids were doing well.

That was their last conversation before Roy learned that his wife allegedly fatally shot herself to death. 

Roy said that as a police officer, he could not believe that she committed suicide inside the room of Bayate, who is assigned at the Parian Police Station.

Heide and Bayate were close friends and went to college together. Because she was still having her Field Training Program duties in Cebu City, Heide stayed in Bayate’s house along Ascencion Street in Barangay Sambag I.

Heidi allegedly shot herself in the side of her chest, the bullet exiting her back, using Bayate’s gun.

 “Di ko motuo nga nag-suicide (I don’t believe she killed herself) as alleged ni Bayate? Kinsa man na siya ba? Bana ba na siya? (Who is she, anyway?)” Roy said.

There were rumors Bayate and Heidi were actually lovers even when the victim was married to Roy and they have children. 

Roy, who was emotional when interviewed by the media yesterday, said he had no idea if his wife would come to visit Bayate in her house.

He said his wife did not mention a thing to him and that they have been cons-tantly communicating with each other since the beginning of her FTP duties.

Roy and Heidi have been married for eight years and they have a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl as children.

Roy said that during their marriage, he did not notice any suicidal tendencies in his wife, although sometimes they quarrel due to financial problems.

He admitted noticing that Heidi and Bayate were very close.

Before the alleged suicide, he said his wife told him that after her FTP she would request to be assigned in Bohol and that they would build a house of their own.

Jeffrey Torion, a relative who also stays in the ancestral house Roy and Heidi were living in for the past eight years, said he, too, could not believe she committed suicide.

Senior Inspector Elisandro Quijano, Cebu City Police Office Homicide Section chief, said they are not yet ruling out the possibility of accidental firing or even murder as the suicide angle is merely based on Bayate’s statement.

Quijano said they are still waiting for the result of the investigation and the findings of the Scene of the Crime Operation in its examination of the forensic evidence its personnel gathered.

He said that once the result of the paraffin test is released they would know what really happened last Friday morning. — /RHM (FREEMAN)