BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – It sounds cute in an Adam Levine song of how memories bring back memories bring back you but in a rum-induced memory recall, it is bound to get bloody.
Like what happened in a sugarcane plantation in Escalante, a city 93 kilometers north of here where a massacre 36 years ago on the eve of Martial Law commemoration lingers as the defining memory of that city.
Last 1 November 2021, however, it was the rush of memories fuelled by rhum and other liver pickling solutions that led to the stabbing of Gerardo Alcoseba Bulanon, 34, a resident of San Martin, a sub village in Hacienda Fe village.
Police who pieced together the incident said Bulanon was brought around 9:15 in the evening of Halloween to the government hospital in Escalante.
The probe showed he and the suspect, Raldon Caranguit, also a San Martin resident, had separate drinking sprees with their friends, all in San Martin.
The blotter said the victim, after downing a bottle of Tanduay rhum, decided to walk home and met the suspect on the road.
The suspect then confronted him about their old grudges after which, “Heated arguments” ensued between them as a result, the suspect got angry and took a knife from his waist and stabbed the victim once on the chest.
The victim is still being treated while police have yet to arrest the suspect.