A female doctor was stabbed in her own home, a male patient was shot in the head at close range, and a pregnant woman was hacked to death by her husband, all in a span of three hours early Monday morning.
Police believe the killings may have even been committed almost simultaneously but a fourth one occurred shortly before noon.
At 3:15 a.m., patients recuperating at Ward 8 of the Orthopedic Section of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) either watched in shock or were awakened by a muffled gunshot as a man shot Bonifacio Nadela at close range.
Nadela, 37, who earned a living as a habal-habal driver, was confined for gunshot wounds in his right leg after he was reportedly shot on Feb. 17 in San Fernando. The orthopedic doctor who performed the surgery on Nadela took four hours to save his leg.
Nadela’s sister Fe said her brother had been mum on why he was shot.
Fe was asleep when two assailants came. She was awakened by what she thought was the sound of broken glass. She looked up only to find her brother’s face drenched in blood from a bullet hole in his head.
Police found two empty caliber .45 shells. Probers are looking at leads that Nadela might have been involved in an affair with a married woman.
VSMMC authorities were stupefied by the dawn shooting that they were prompted to implement security measures in haste.
In another incident, 60-year-old neurologist and psychiatrist Marietta Gardose was found dead in her store at Tres de Abril in Labangon.
Gardose was found dead by her maids at about 6 a.m. with a knife still stuck just below her left armpit. She was not wearing any underwear.
A neurologist and psychiatrist for close to 30 years, Gardose was a practicing physician in the United States but had long given up the medical profession when she came back to the country.
She leased out three buildings in Tres de Abril, Sanciangko and Tabada, and operated an Internet cafe.
Police are not discounting robbery because they found bruises on Gardose’s body and discovered the steel cabinet where she kept cash to be empty.
Meanwhile, a seven months’ pregnant woman was hacked to death by her own husband, who is said to be mentally unstable, in Barangay Dinarohan in Minglanilla, also early Monday morning.
Rosalie Cabiles, 27, a mother of three children, was mixing feeds for her pigs at about 6:30 a.m. when her husband, Fernando Cabiles, 29, appeared from behind and hacked her to death with a single blow using a long bolo.
Cabiles was later seen by witnesses trying to amputate his left hand but was apprehended by policemen. — Freeman News Service