Drunken Marine official blows himself up

COTABATO CITY , Philippines  – A drunken Marine sergeant accidentally blew himself up, his seven-year-old daughter and a neighbor with a fragmentation grenade during a drinking spree in Parang, Maguindanao Sunday night.

Superintendent Danilo Bacas, spokesman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police, said the fatalities, a certain Sgt. Pamitan, who belonged to a unit of the Philippine Marine Corps assigned in Basilan, his seven-year-old daughter, Alene Mae, and a neighbor named Arcania Doyongan, 52, died from multiple shrapnel wounds in different parts of their bodies.

Bacas said Pamitan, who was known as Jek-Jek in their village in Landasan District in Parang, first had an altercation with a drinking buddy, whom he threatened to kill with a fragmentation grenade.

The drunken soldier reportedly got a fragmentation grenade inside their house upon seeing his companions, warned them he would pull off its safety pin and set it off.

“His drinking partners managed to run away. His daughter and wife tried to pacify him. He accidentally dropped the grenade while they were trying to calm him down,” Bacas said.

Witnesses said the explosion instantly killed Pamitan, his daughter and Doyongan, who tried to help force him into their house.

Pamitan’s wife, Joy, 35, was seriously injured in the blast and is now confined at a hospital here, undergoing treatment.

Pamitan was on a week-long leave from his unit in Basilan to attend their barangay fiesta in Landasan Sunday.   – With Cecille Suerte Felipe