A post-graduate student who also worked as a teaching assistant at the Ateneo de Manila University was found dead yesterday morning in the school campus in Quezon City.
Jose Lorenzo Tan, 24, was found at 6 a.m. inside a cubicle in the faculty room of Ateneo’s philosophy department.
The police said Tan died of suffocation from the fumes of charcoal he set alight after he sealed the cubicle’s windows and other openings with plastic sheets.
Superintendent Franklin Moises Mabanag, chief of the Quezon City Police District’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit, said Tan’s father claimed his son has had past suicide attempts.
“So the father is saying it was a case of suicide,” Mabanag said, adding that the father did not request for an autopsy to be conducted on the body of his son.
Mabanag said they are not ruling out the possibility of foul play. “In the absence of a suicide note, we can’t declare yet that it was a case of suicide,” he said. – Reinir Padua