Alegria mayor orders probe on Sunday fire

Alegria town Mayor Raul Guisadio yesterday ordered the town police to probe if there was foul play in the death of a businesswoman and her grandchild when a dawn fire razed their house last Sunday in barangay Madridejos, Alegria.

Guisadio, in a radio interview yesterday, said he wants the police to delve into the matter and see if Cerela and Paul John Bustamante were first robbed and then killed before the house was set on fire.

This after the Bustamante family claimed Cerela "had lots of money she never kept in a bank". They also disclosed that aside from running a big store at the public market of Madridejos, Alegria, she also owned two delivery cargo trucks and was engaged in the vegetable trade.

The Bustamantes set aside the theory that both were trapped inside the house during the fire. Guisadio backed the family's theory that Cerela could have been robbed, as it was unlikely for the victims to be located few meters apart if indeed they were trapped in the fire. Guisadio reasoned out it could have been more logical to say they had been trapped if they were found hugging each other, as is the normal scenario.

And even though the Alegria Police, who were first to have responded to the fire using the firecycle donated by the Capitol, theorized that an overheated electric fan could have started the fire, the family set this angle aside when a friend of Cerela told them it was strange early that night when she came to visit the woman in the house and found nobody answering back when she called out for her name a couple of times. But weighing up that the woman could have fallen fast asleep already that early, she decided to leave the area.

As the Bustamantes are also suspicious of the possible involvement of store workers, they also sought the help of the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct a probe on said store helpers and also an autopsy on the victims to find out if there were signs of struggle or stab wounds sustained before the two died. - Flor Z. Perolina