EDITORIAL - Culture of violence

The attack was not random but premeditated, and the target was not a student. Still, widespread dismay and concern greeted the murder of former Lamitan City mayor Rose Furigay by physician Chao Tiao Yumol during the graduation ceremony of the Ateneo de Manila Law School in Quezon City last Sunday afternoon.

Also slain in the gun attack were Furigay’s aide Victor George Capistrano and Ateneo security guard Jeneven Bandiola. Furigay’s daughter Hannah and another person were wounded. Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo, the guest speaker at the graduation, was reportedly on his way to the university when Yumol opened fire.

Furigay’s camp said Yumol had harbored a grudge against the former mayor since 2018, when she carried out an order from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, shutting down the doctor’s clinic for operating allegedly without a permit across the Lamitan City Hall in Basilan where he is a resident.

Yumol then reportedly posted on social media insinuations of wrongdoing against Furigay, the vice mayor at the time and several other city government employees, which drew over 70 complaints for cyber libel. In September 2019, Yumol turned himself in to the police for 26 counts of cyber libel.

In a televised chance interview, Yumol accused Furigay and her husband Roderick, the current mayor of Lamitan, of involvement in drug trafficking. Yumol also filed a complaint against the couple before the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission, but it was dismissed for lack of evidence. In January last year, Yumol filed a complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman against PACC head Greco Belgica.

Last Sunday afternoon, Yumol reportedly arrived at the Ateneo campus in a transport network service vehicle. Upon seeing Furigay, whose daughter Hannah was among the graduating students, Yumol opened fire.

The only positive aspect in this tragedy was the capture of Yumol as he fled, first in a stolen car, and then in a public utility vehicle. The tragedy, however, invites closer scrutiny of mental health issues and the circumstances that can drive a physician to resort to lethal violence. This aspect deserves as much consideration as the assessment of the security situation in the country and the ease of obtaining guns.