GINGOOG CITY – The family of slain broadcast journalist Arecio Padrigao Sr. has decided to bury the victim on Friday at the Gingoog Public Cemetery, even as the relatives continue to raise funds to pay the expenses.
Padrigao, 52, was shot dead in front of his seven-year-old daughter last Monday by two unidentified men riding tandem on a motorcycle, in front of the State University in Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental.
The victim’s family is having a hard time raising the more than P20,000 needed for funeral expenses. They had so far raised only P8,000.
“We have to bury him on Friday to prevent extending the funeral service, despite my late husband’s sisters’ and brothers’ request to wait for other relatives coming from other areas in Mindanao and the Visayas to attend the burial,” said Padrigao’s widow Teresita.
Padrigao was a block timer of the local FM station dxRS.
Willy Ramos, another block timer at dxRS, said local broadcasters promote the welfare of the community, but citizens do not help local media men.
Mrs. Padrigao, who is also facing oral defamation charges filed by a local politician, claimed that when her husband was still alive many people told their problems to the broadcaster, who aired their grievances on radio.
“Now all of them are gone and nowhere to be found when we needed them most,” Teresita added.
Gingoog City Vice Mayor Marlon Kho filed charges before the local prosecutor’s office against Mrs. Padrigao for allegedly shouting in public that he (Kho) was the one who killed her husband.
Teresita, however, said that she has no regrets about her husband’s fate, saying: “This is the life my husband had chosen, to serve people even to the detriment of his own family.”
Padrigao’s elder brother Adelo, 55, expressed fear that the killing of the radio broadcaster could be added to the unsolved murders of media men in the country.
Adelo lamented that local police have not assigned even one policeman to secure the family despite Mrs. Padrigao’s request for police protection.
The victim’s family claimed that the investigation of the case is very slow and they fear that the case will remain unsolved. – With Cecille Suerte Felipe