Who will answer for Fuentes’ death?

By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent /

NOW, no one wants to take the blame for the death of Rene Fuentes, the man with a mental health problem who was locked up in a government facility in El Salvador City, Misamis Oriental.

The police chief of El Salvador, Supt. Jerry Tambis, yesterday denied that Fuentes died behind bars inside the police station when fire broke out at around midnight the other day.

Tambis said Fuentes was not detained at the police station.

He pointed to El Salvador’s City Social Welfare and Development Office that supposedly placed Fuentes under “safekeeping” because the fire victim had become violent.

“Dili to among detainee. Ila to sa CSWD kay ilang gi-safekeeping  kay bayolinte lagi,” he said.

According to Tambis, there were only two detainees at the police station — Reynaldo Amarga and Richie Estor — and both were rescued.

Fuentes, he said, died of suffocation in the city hall-owned storage facility where the victim was locked up.

The head of El Salvador’s social workers, Anuncianon Prospero, also denied any responsibility for the death of Fuentes, saying that the CSWD had nothing to do with the act of placing the man under safekeeping.

Instead, Prospero pointed to Fuentes’s sister Gina Cabigquis who allegedly locked up Fuentes inside a storage facility of El Salvador’s engineering office apparently with the consent of local officials.

The storage facility stood beside the police station located within the El Salvador city hall compound where Prospero and other social workers are holding office.

“Wala gyud ko masayod kinsay gipananghiran ni Gina nga i-safekeeping ang iyang igso-on diha,” Prospero said.

She said Fuentes’s sister had a key to the city hall-owned storage facility “kay siya man ang tighatud ug pagka-on.”

Prospero said Cabigquis is a sitio leader of Badjangon in Barangay Molugan who apparently had access to city hall officials.

Fuentes had been under “safekeeping” for quite some time, according to Tambis.

Prospero said Fuentes had suffered a mental health problem for over 10 years, and there had been times when he would wield a knife and threaten people with it.

But what Prospero and the CSWD did to take care of the man and why the fire victim was locked up in a government facility beside a police station within a city hall compound apparently with the consent of local officials are questions that remained unanswered.