One more gin death in Malabon

Malabon City Mayor Amado Vicencio, concerned with the rash of deaths involving poison-laced or fake gin, raised anew a warning to the drinking public after one more person reportedly died, city authorities said yesterday.

That made it three fatalities this week, not including the first set of five confirmed victims who died one after the other after downing contaminated gin at a streetside drinking session over a week ago near the common boundary of Caloocan and Malabon.

One survived the first incident. Two bottles of gin, already opened, were reportedly offered to the victims by a still unidentified woman.

Gerardo Gonzales, Malabon’s Public Order and Safety Office (POSO) chief and concurrent Public Information Officer (PIO), confirmed yesterday Nicanor Amago of East Riverside, Potrero, Malabon succumbed to alcohol poisoning last June 1 at the Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center.

The STAR tried to verify the reports from the police but at press time only one confirmed fatality showed on police records.

Gonzales said witnesses told him Amago was with the others in the drinking session as reported in the papers. He said that for some unexplained reasons, his name was not included either in the police report or in the barangay blotter from which the police based their initial report.

At the police station, representatives of a local gin maker were spotted, sources said, in a bid to get reports on the latest incident.

Vicencio, since hearing of the first reports, has ordered the police and local agencies at the city hall to run after possible illegal manufacturers out to rake in profits from the sale of cheap but toxic gin, a popular drink among the masses.

Unconfirmed reports say the latest incidents, reminiscent of the slew of deaths from liquor deaths in Metro Manila decades ago, could be a demolition job against a popular brand of gin.