Was it an accident or murder?

Last Sunday evening while I was watching the replay of the NBA game that I missed when it was aired live that morning, our phone rang. Our son, Averell, told us of a very sad event that blurred the excitement basketball would normally generate in me. One of our employees met a terrible road accident somewhere in Toledo City. Our son was on his way to the hospital to find out what support we could give.

On his way back home, Averell dropped by our place to tell us what unimaginable things he knew about the accident. It happened mid afternoon when the summer sun was simmering. While the sky was clear, the paved road was somewhat deserted. Apparently, our worker enjoyed a motorcycle run. He was, as the Americans are wont to describe it, DUI, to mean something derogatory and therefore, for the sake of fairness, unworthy of print. Since the area was rather uninhabited, it was by a stroke of an unlikely chance that a barangay tanod found him unconscious by the roadside.

With what details my son knew, he relayed all to us. Everyone working on the theory that drinking and driving do not mix, assumed that it was an accident. Although seemingly complete, the story was hearsay, I must admit. Just the same, they did not add up. There were gaps that, in my humble experience and in the natural course of events, raised more questions than answers.

The place of the accident showed no man-made structures against which the motorcycle could have bumped. If there were lampposts, road markers, steel railings or houses, they could have shown telltale signs of mishaps. Neither were there loose stones on the road, mounds or piles of sand and gravel, broken pieces of wood or even trees, which our employee could have hit causing his motorcycle to slide, careen or at least wobble and for him to fall, lurch, summersault or what.

There were no tire marks, those impressions which are registered on the surface of the road when a driver suddenly and forcefully applies his brake. Neither marks to show that his motorbike skidded even for a short distance.

Certainly, there were no indications that he sideswiped a pedestrian or anything inanimate. Nobody reported of our worker’s having crashed his motorcycle into another vehicle on the road.

He must have met his accident by his lonesome!

What was curious was that his helmet appeared to have been smashed to smithereens. The helmet broke as if Barry Bonds instead of hitting a baseball with homer, zeroed his bat on it. Naturally, the face of our Heidelberg operator, showing signs of injuries all over, swelled beyond imagination. Aside from the head and facial injuries, no abrasions could be found on the rest of his body. His arms, elbows, legs, knees, shoulders, chest or back, the human anatomy likely to be cut (at least) from motorcycle crashes bore no abrasions.

I am no traffic expert. The several incidents I, when still in active law practice, investigated do not make me one. But, there is no other way I could reconstruct the incident. Our employee could have only disembarked from his motorcycle and executed a perfect dive hitting his head smack on the road.

Fortunately, our worker was not irrational much less suicidal.

Few days ago, I learned of a foreigner who claimed to have been ambushed while riding a motorcycle somewhere in Balamban town. He believed his assailants might have harbored grudge from a loan transaction gone sour. But, he could not say that with certainty neither could he name names as his suspects. I have also read of another incident involving another motorcycle rider. The incident took place in another barangay near where the foreigner miraculously escaped more serious injury. It was reported that he, too, was attacked by persons unknown to him. What was horrifying was that he could not even imagine a reason for such a crime. Good thing, they both survived.

The accident(?) involving our employee happened in still another barangay in that western corridor of the province not far away from the scenes of the two other incidents. Because he expired without having the chance to tell the real story, I am left with a nagging question only the police authorities can answer. Was a murder committed and if so, is there a murderer at large in that area?

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