Vizconde passes away

MANILA, Philippines - Lauro Vizconde, chairman emeritus of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), died yesterday afternoon at the intensive care unit of a Parañaque City hospital after suffering four successive heart attacks. He was 78.

“Ka Lauro Vizconde just joined his family and our God now. Let us pray for his reposed soul,” Dante Jimenez said in a text message sent out at 5:32 p.m.

Vizconde founded the VACC with Jimenez in 1998 as a movement to pursue justice for victims of heinous crimes.

Jimenez earlier said Vizconde was rushed by his aides to the Unihealth Parañaque Hospital and Medical Center in Sucat at about 8 p.m. on Thursday after he complained of weakness.

Vizonde lived in the same house in Parañaque City where his wife Estrellita, 49, and daughters Carmela, 18, and Jennifer, 6, were stabbed dead on June 30, 1991, Jimenez said. Carmela was also raped.

Jimenez said it was at the hospital that Vizconde had four heart attacks, with the last one sending him to the intensive care unit.

On Friday night, Jimenez said Vizconde’s relatives told doctors of their wish to detach him from the life support system.

Jimenez said the Supreme Court’s decision to acquit all the accused in the murder of his wife and two daughters caused Vizconde’s health to deteriorate.

“He lost his will to live,” he said.

Vizconde was in the United States on a business trip when the crime happened. Several men, including former senator Freddie Webb’s son Hubert, were convicted of the crime in 2000.

The Supreme Court, however, overturned the decision in 2010 and acquitted all of the convicts, who had been detained since 1995.