Trike driver butchers boarder, tries suicide

MANILA, Philippines - A tricycle driver hacked to death his family’s boarder and then tried to hang himself from the third-floor terrace of their house in Pasig City Wednesday night.

With an electrical cord looped around his neck and a bloody bolo in his hand, Albert John Vista, 26, was preparing to jump when he was grabbed by Inspector Joerel Calipusan and Barangay Pinagbuhatan chairman Rodrigo Asilo.

Pasig police chief Senior Superintendent Jose Hidalgo Jr. ordered the filing of appropriate charges against Vista, who is being held in the city police’s detention center, with the prosecutor’s office.

Neighbors claimed Vista started acting strangely after quarreling with a Taguig City policeman, who shot at him, last November. The case is now with a Pasig court.

According to reports reaching Hidalgo, Vista was seen emerging from the room of their boarder, Vicente Almaceda, holding a bloodied bolo at around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.

When members of his household looked in Almaceda’s room, they found his body – which bore several hack wounds – on his bed.

Witnesses said that before he climbed to the third floor of their house, Vista told his father that he had killed someone.

At the third floor, Vista looped the electrical cord around his neck and threatened to jump and use the bolo on himself. Calipusan and Asilo, who tried to talk to Vista, prevented him from jumping.

Vista’s wife, Sheryl, cried and hugged her husband’s rescuers. The couple has three children.