COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Three women, two of them college teachers, died instantly when the motorcycle they were riding together hit a vehicle approaching from the opposite direction of a highway in Tupi town in South Cotabato late Friday, October 25.
Brig. Gen. James Gulmatico, director of the Police Regional Office-12, told reporters on Saturday that the three fatalities, Rezile De Padua, Glykiel Jade Bico and Jonaira Ambaco, were on their way to somewhere when they met an accident at a stretch of the Koronodal-General Santos Highway in Barangay Crossing Rubber in Tupi.
All three of them died at the scene, according to Gulmatico.
The municipality of Tupi in South Cotabato is near the provincial capital, Koronadal City.
De Padua and Bico were both teachers in the Southeast Asian Institute of Technology in Tupi while Ambaco was a senior criminology student in the same tertiary school.
Witnesses had told reporters and police officials who responded to the incident that the motorcycle ridden by the three women first swerved towards the left lane of the highway and collided head-on with a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck coming from the other end of the route.
Gulmatico said the driver of the pick-up truck, Anthony Teloren, voluntarily yielded to the policemen dispatched to investigate the incident and turned over to them his driver’s license.