By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent /
RENE Fuentes, the man with a mental disorder who died in the El Salvador city hall fire last week, was locked up in a storage facility of the local government with the consent of Mayor Edgar Lignes.
Lignes told the Gold Star Daily yesterday that it was he who verbally allowed Fuentes’s family to place the man under “safekeeping” at the storage facility at the old city hall building.
El Salvador police chief Supt. Jerry Tambis said Fuentes, who was in his forties, died of suffocation when the building caught fire last week.
Lignes said he gave the verbal approval because the family, represented by the victim’s sister Gina Cabigquis, asked him for a temporary place to confine Fuentes while they were still preparing a place for him at home in Sitio Badjangnon, Molugan.
Cabigquis, a barangay health worker of Molugan, has been given a key to the storage facility, according to the head of El Salvador’s social welfare and development office.
Lignes said there was no choice but to lock Fuentes up because the man had become violent and posed as a threat to people.
He said Fuentes had stabbed and wounded a policeman whom the mayor did not identify.
Barangay officials of Molugan gave up on Fuentes who became uncontrollable, according to Lignes.
“Na-ay magsakay sa motor iyang gokoron, labayon, tiradoron. Mao na nga dunay rason sab nga ipa-safekeeping siya,” he said.
Lignes said he also agreed to lock Fuentes up to ensure that he would be able to regularly take his medicines.
He said the local government spent a considerable amount of funds to help Fuentes get better.
There was even a time when the local government sent Fuentes to the House of Hope in Cagayan de Oro using funds intended for social welfare and development.
Fuentes had been sent home from the House of Hope after he showed signs of recovery but then, he subsequently regressed, according to El Salvador city social welfare and development officer Anuncianon Prospero.
Cabigquis, Fuentes’s elder sister, confirmed that it was she who asked the mayor to allow his brother to be locked up inside the storage facility.
She said Fuentes’s mental health problem started after he survived a jeepney accident when he was 12 years old.
“Nabundak man iyang ulo sa kalsada, ug naayo na man to siya, pero nag-ingon ang iyang doctor nga mobalik ra gihapon ang pagka da-ot sa iyang ulo,” Cabigquis said.
She declined to say more after revealing that her brother was already given a decent burial in Molugan on Friday and that their mother passed away in June.
“Grabe kaayo among problema, bag-o pa namatay among mama, sunod ako na sang manghod,” she said.
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