By Julius Mariveles and Cesar Jolito III
BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – Ritchel Balagosa was looking forward to giving a speech today on her son’s debut.
She gave it ahead, however, on 12 June 2024 when they buried Nicus in a cemetery facing east, towards home.
“I thought I would give this on your debut, not during your funeral,” Ritchel said in front of her son’s coffin during the memorial rites last week attended by hundreds of friends and other mourners.
Today, she posted on her Facebook account photos showing the cake she was supposed to give her son and only child.
That cake had white icing and a decor of a man on a bike with the word “Nicus,” on top, a reference to her dead son’s favorite sport, biking.
But as Ritchel and her husband, Eric, gathered a small group of their son’s friends, some his fellow volunteers at a local dog shelter, both called for justice, seeking swifter action from authorities.
Eric said they want, in particular, the handing down of arrest warrants so the two gunmen still roaming free can finally be arrested before the first month since the murder closes.
She even had a tarpaulin made greeting Nicus “happy birthday.”
And though Ritchel did not have that dance with the debutant today, she at least got to hug and talk to him early in the morning today.
Even if it happened only in her dreams.
“I saw him in my dreams, we were outside the house and he was playing billiards, I hugged him and he said he did nothing wrong,” Ritchel said.
Even as the two marked their dead son’s birthday, a pledge, his father said, that even death woud not stop them from celebrating it, both can’t help but note the country’s justice system is slow.
The couple called on government to hasten the proceas for the handimg down of an arrest warrant against the five murder suspects who remain at large.
The Bacolod Police Criminal Investigation and Detective Management Unit had earlier filed charges for murder against five men believed to be behind the attack on the Balagosa residence in Granada village on 2 June 2024.
Two of the five chased Nicus, then 20,to his parents’ room where he was shot.
The two shooters were brothers, a police probe showed, with one of them identified to be the father of a girl, 16, who claimed she was raped by two friends of Nicus during a birthday party last May 2024, days before the murder.
Nicus was not named by the victim as one of her sexual assailants and was neither named in the police probes nor charged for the rape.
