A teenager was stabbed to death on Tuesday evening after he refused to repay his friend PHP100 (USD 2) he had borrowed. The suspect, Ariel Zaragosa, said instead of paying his debt, 18-year-old Rolando Tutaan got angry.
The suspect went into Zaragosa’s workplace, a local restaurant, and punched him.
“He didn’t want to give me back my PHP100! He even got angry, that’s why we got in a fistfight. I was inside, he was being loud and it hurt my ears,” Zaragosa said in Filipino.
An eyewitnessed tried to intervene when Zaragosa pulled out a knife.
“The first stab didn’t hit. The second and third did. Even I got sliced and cut,” eyewitness Hajji Alejandro Reynolds said.
Tutaan was rushed to the hospital but died on arrival. Zaragosa was arrested, and when he was asked if he regretted what he did, the suspect said, “What can I do now? I did what I did.”
Zaragosa admitted to using shabu, a popular local form of methamphetamine, and was among those who surrendered in the recent Oplan Tokhang, a program for drug users in President Rodrigo Duterte’s ongoing drug war.
The victim’s father Rolando Tutaan said he couldn’t accept what happened to his son. He also doesn’t believe that a debt was the cause of the stabbing, because this isn’t the first time that the two had fought.
Zaragosa is detained at the Mandaluyong City Jail and faces murder charges for the stabbing.
The story is re-published from ABS-CBNNews
