EDITORIAL — Watching out for red flags

Out of Bacong Town in Negros Oriental comes the tragic news of a 30-year-old man who shot dead his two young daughters before taking his own life last Thursday.

According to reports, the man, who has been separated from his wife, went to where she now lived and asked to see their daughters, as per agreement with child welfare services. The wife, who left him because he often beat her in the past, refused and they argued. He pulled out a gun and tried to shoot her, but she escaped.

Enraged at not being able to kill her, he shot their daughters, aged three and five years old, instead. Then just a short while later, filled with guilt and regret, he turned the gun on himself.

We could easily chalk this up to another issue regarding gun safety, just like the recent incident also in Negros Oriental where a Grade 7 student brought a gun to school and fired it, and that incident in Manila where a 10-year-old accidentally shot his brother dead after their father’s gun went off in his hands. But there is another issue here; the importance of seeing red flags in a person.

According to the same reports, the man, a security guard, had posted messages in social media that could be interpreted as suicidal.

“Bye-bye world” he allegedly said in his post.

Police also said based on their investigation he may have been considering killing his wife beforehand, considering that he abandoned his security post bringing along with him his service firearm --something that he cannot take off-site with him-- went he went to see his family.

But they could not say if he meant to kill their daughters.

And now we are left to wonder if three deaths could have been prevented had people seen the signs that he was disturbed and acted on them.

Admittedly, it isn’t easy to predict what a person will do. And even if we do get some inkling of what someone will do, we usually stay out of what we consider another person’s business or affairs.

But in this particular case, if his behavior and been observed and action taken, then perhaps the unnecessary deaths of three people, two of them innocent young girls, could have been prevented.