by Mira Nicole Magbanua and Julius Mariveles
BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – Police already facing a string of largely unsolved sensational cases here are now faced with another one that could either be solved or could head to the freezer once more after a pair or hands severed at the wrist were found swimming in meat broth and left behind in a barangay here reputed as a go-to place of illicit drug users.
“We are still verifying what it means,” Jonito Pastrana, who heads the probe of Station 2 on the baffling case, told DNX hours after a used ice cream container was found by garbage collectors in the community of Sigay in Barangay 2 around 5am today, 25 January 2023.
Pastrana described the hands as cut from the wrists and were swimming in a meat broth, popularly known here as linaga, a soup soured by batwan fruit with young jackfruit.
What made the case more baffling was a piece of paper placed inside a plastic wrapper that was found with the hands.
On it was written a list of names.
Barangay 2 village chief Emelda Banguanga confirmed that the 22 names are those of residents in Sigay and Cagaycay sub villages.
The only lead police have as of now, Pastrana said, is a footage from a Closed Circuit Television Camera that showed a white van stopping along the road where the container was found around 2am today.
It is not clear, however, based on the footage if someone got down from the van.
Police here have yet to solve the murders of two businessmen – Ivan Magbanua and Jeffrey Keng Seng – and lawyer Danny Pondevilla, which all occured last year but remain unsolved until now.
