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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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Sunday, June 18, 2017
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ILOILO City – A woman from La Paz district working in Oman died in an apparent suicide.
But the family of the 33-year-old Mae Peñalver of Barangay Jereos believes there was foul play.
Peñalver has been in the Arab country for seven to eight years already, according to her elder sister Lorelie.
On June 11 she failed to report to work.
Her bothered fellow employees in a catering service called her through her mobile phone, but she did not answer.
According to the Oman police, Peñalver was later found in her lodging house hanging from a ceiling with an electrical cable tied around her neck.
They learned about all these also on July 11 from their elder brother, also an overseas Filipino worker in Oman, Lorelie said in an RMN-Iloilo interview.
Their elder brother was living in a place around a 30-minute to one-hour drive from where Peñalver was staying, said Lorelie.
But Lorelie said their family was suspicious of her younger sister’s death.
When their brother learned about Peñalver’s death, he immediately went to their sister’s lodging house.
Their brother no longer found Peñalver’s body, which the police already brought to a hospital morgue, said Lorelie.
Their elder brother and a friend were able to see Peñalver’s body at the morgue only the following day, she said.
While they saw bruises on her hand and body, they have not found any sign of choking, only the electrical cable on her neck, said Lorelie.
Peñalver was sort of the right hand of her boss. She would immediately report problems at the workplace, Lorelie said in the radio interview.
She said they suspect that fellow employees who may have harbored grudges against Peñalver may have had a hand in her death. Peñalver was the only Filipina at her workplace, Lorelie noted.
Peñalver once told her she would hear someone knocking at her lodging house door or trying to forcibly open it, Lorelie said.
The family sought help from the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
They wanted Peñalver’s body autopsied to determine the real cause of her death.
In February last year an Ilongga overseas worker in Singapore also died in an apparent suicide.
Her employer claimed she found Marivic Salvoza of San Miguel, Iloilo hanging from the ceiling of her condominium unit’s toilet on Feb. 7.
Her family does not believe Salvoza could kill herself. Suspicious, they also had the body re-autopsied.
But the second postmortem examination was inconclusive, according to the National Bureau of Investigation./PN
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