Woman tags ex-maid in attack

MANILA, Philippines - A house helper is accused of killing her former employer’s niece and leaving her former employer badly hurt in Mandaluyong City yesterday.

Milagros Viray, 81, identified Oranesa Bogcalao as the woman who allegedly stabbed her and her niece, Solina Viray. Milagros is under observation at the Victor Potenciano Medical Center.

Bogcalao paid her former employer a visit Monday and disappeared after the attack on the Virays was discovered.

Chief Inspector Carlito Canlas, chief of the criminal investigation unit of the Mandaluyong City police said they have in custody another former housemaid, Belinda Espinosa, who paid the Virays a visit at the same time as Bogcalao.

Espinosa said she and Bogcalao met for the first time last Monday and insisted that she has no knowledge of what Bogcalao had done. Espinosa said she was already in the Virays’ apartment when Bogcalao arrived at about 1:30 p.m. Monday.

Canlas said it was at about 4:30 a.m. yesterday when the Virays’ relatives heard moaning and shouts for help coming from the victims’ apartment at the ground floor of a three-story residential building along Barangka Drive.

When the victims’ relatives rushed to the ground floor, they saw the door of the apartment padlocked. When they destroyed the lock, they saw Milagros lying on the floor. She named Bogcalao as her alleged attacker. Solina’s body was found in the bathroom.

Milagros owns the building where her apartment is located, as well as several other apartments in the neighborhood. Her relatives strongly suspect that robbery was the motive for the attack.

“They (relatives) are hoping that the elder Viray would survive her wounds because she was the only one who knew how much money she lost to Bogcalao,” Canlas said. He is asking the victims’ relatives for a copy of surveillance camera footage that reportedly showed the attack.