Problem with thesis causes student's suicide

ILOILO CITY, Philippines – As police investigation progressed, probers saw no other reason behind the suicide of a graduating Nursing student other than her problem on her thesis.

Senior Police Office 4 Victor Legaspi, Iloilo City Police Station 1 investigator, said that Vina Marie del Rosario’s clinical instructors surmised that she might have been pressured because of her unfinished thesis.

The pressure mounted after the school posted the names of the students who could have their on-the-job training in hospitals, as prerequisites for graduation.

Del Rosario’s name was not on it. “She might have feared that because she could not take her OJT, she could not graduate this school year,” Legaspi said.

Unconfirmed reports added that it was not the first time that del Rosario had a bout with depression, the investigator said although the police has yet to have a copy of the medical records of the student.

Legaspi also brushed off allegations that the victim had an underlying problem, particularly insinuation that she was pregnant. “She was not,” he declared.

The 22-year-old Del Rosario, a Nursing student of the St. Therese-MTC Colleges and resident of Barangay Obrero in La Paz district of this city, jumped off the third floor of the Atrium Mall at corner of Valeria Street and Bonifacio Drive in the city.

Police reports stated that she entered the mall as soon as it opened at 8 a.m. and proceeded to the 3rd floor. She was by her lonesome and was not in uniform.

A cashier and a barber of a salon, one of the mall tenants, claimed that they noticed the victim to be uneasy. They said she was walking back and forth, and few minutes later saw her mounting the steel railing. They tried to prevent her but the victim was quick to jump to her death.