EDITORIAL – Double tragedy

Leticia Eufemia paid dearly for the great luck that made her P19.6 million richer in the state lottery last Oct. 12. As any normal person would have done in a nation where kidnapping for ransom is a thriving industry, Eufemia tried to keep her winnings a secret in the neighborhood where she lived with her fa-mily in a modest house. When neighbors started noticing improvements in her life — a brand-new van and parties thrown by her husband Arturo, among others — she explained that they had sold some property.

Unfortunately, some nincompoop at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which operates the lottery, announced that the winner of the P19.6 million jackpot lived in Eufemia’s village. It was easy to put two and two together. At around 1 a.m. on Oct. 27, seven masked men barged into the winner’s house at Nazarene Ville subdivision in Barangay San Roque, Antipolo City, and fatally shot Eufemia’s husband. The men ransacked the house then fled with the family van and an undetermined amount of money.

That was not the only tragedy that befell Eufemia. She soon found herself and her son Renan identified by the Antipolo police as possible suspects in the murder. Not-too-pleasant details of the family’s life were announced by the police to the press without worrying if reputations were being destroyed even as a family was still grieving over the loss of a loved one. Mother and son were cleared only after several suspects were arrested and indicted for the crime. The men were allegedly hired to murder Arturo, a former taxi driver, after he refused to lend his cousin P400,000.

It’s not the first time that police officers have publicly announced suspicions about certain persons in a sensational crime. Leticia Eufemia should probably be thankful that she was not arrested after being tagged as a possible suspect. In the celebrated Vizconde murders, three batches of suspects were arrested and indicted before Hubert Webb and his co-accused were convicted. The case remains on appeal and could still be overturned.

This shoot-from-the-hip type of criminal investigation not only destroys re-putations but also makes for haphazard police work. In the rush to solve a sensational case, the innocent becomes wrongly accused while the real criminals get away, ready to strike again.