BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – A fired school janitor who was nagged by guilt and gave himself up after setting fire to a school in the northern Negros Occidental city of San Carlos was not suffering from any mental illness, the chief spokesman of Camp Montelibano here said.
“He knew he started the fire,” Captain Wilma Silva told DNX after the man, past middle age, surrendered to the San Carlos City Police Office after knowing that the blaze he started from the storeroom of Daisy’s ABC House also gutted the house of Mayor Renato Gustilo and spread to another known business building owned by a Gustilo patriarch.
Police and the local fire bureau did not name the man who was already charged for arson and is now held at the local police station.
Philippine laws define simple arson as having been committed when there is international burning; and what is intentionally burned is an inhabited house or dwelling.
