Tragedy strikes Jasaan family twice in a week

By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent

RETIRED public school teacher Francisca Alaba would not be able to make it to the funeral of her murdered son today because her husband died barely a week after her child’s assassination in Baler, Aurora.

The 65-year old Francisca lost two loved ones this month––her son Judge Erwin Jude Alaba, and her husband Expedito. The judge was shot to death two Tuesdays ago by a motorcycleiding assassin in Baler in what many suspected was an attack that had something to do with one of the cases the victim was hearing. Last weekend, the judge’s father breathed his last in his home in lower Jasaan, Misamis Oriental, after a long battle with prostate cancer.

She said her husband died without knowing that their son was murdered outside his courtroom in Baler. Francisca said she was moved.

“Na-shock ako, nago-ol ako, and I even asked the Lord why this happened,” she told the Gold Star Daily. Francisca said her 44-year old son did not deserve the violent death because “naghimo man unta siya sa mga maayong gawi dinhi sa kalibutan.”

She said her son was shot seven times, the most fatal of which was through the heart, and his wife was hospitalized because she was grazed by one of the assassin’s bullets.

Francisca said she would have flown to Manila for the funeral of her son in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, had it not been for the death of her husband. The judge’s remains would be brought to Laguna today from the Don Bosco Memorial Chapel in Makati City. Expedito’s remains lie in state at Cosmopolitan in this city. The former regional director of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) was 78.

Francisca said she opted not to tell her husband about their son’s murder because, at that time, he was already ailing. “Wala na lang namo siya sultihi para dili sab siya mago-ol,” she said.