Lone Fatality

 
A wife, a mother, and three children – all before the bag containing the body of Joel Tan, the lone fatality of three days of heavy rains in Dingalan brought by an active low pressure area.

Joel drowned Wednesday January 25 after being swept by a strong river current towards Dingalan Bay. His body was found two days later, along a cove in a nearby barangay.

At the time of the accident, Joel was carrying his nine-year old son Biboy. The kid miraculously survived after clinging onto a tree trunk. It was dark at that time, around seven in the evening.

Father and son and a few other men came from a wedding reception that night. They had second thoughts on whether to cross the river or let the water subside. Joel insisted on crossing the river because he was thinking of his starving pigs at home.

What’s unfortunate, his mother Cristina told me, is that Joel has been living in Dingalan for four years now, trying to move on with his life. Cristina says she sent Joel from their Tanay, Rizal home to their relatives in Dingalan to overcome his drug addiction. He was doing well, keeping himself busy with his pigs, until that fateful night of January 25th.