MANILA, Philippines — By all accounts, Maynard Allan Manalo, 17, was your typical Filipino teenager — a jolly fellow who dreamed big dreams and loved basketball.
But on November 14, around 6:30 p.m., as he and his girlfriend were chatting near their homes, in the place called Hagdang Bato in Barangay Pembo, Makati City, three men, their faces masked in bonnets, approached and opened fire on the young man.
Maynard’s mother, Maryan Manalo, said someone old her shots had been fired and Maynard was down.
The gunmen fled on a motorcycle.
Unfortunately, the shooting was not captured by the barangay’s closed circuit television cameras, although they did show neighbors loading Maynard onto a tricycle and rushing him off to a hospital where he eventually died from a shot to the head from a .45 caliber pistol.
Incidentally, said Mryan Manalo, just minutes before he was shot, Maynard shared a social media post of someone who said they were apprehensive because “napansin ko puro maganda at pogi lang ang namamatay (I’ve noticed only the pretty and handsome ones die).”
Maryan, an overseas worker and single mother, said she could think of no one who wanted her eldest child dead or why, although she entertained the possibility he may have been mistaken for someone else.
“Wala po akong alam na kaaway ng anak ko eh (I don’t know of any enemy my son may have had),” she said, adding that the place where Maynard was shot is also a favorite haunt of neighborhood youth gangs who may have been involved in fights.
Barangay chairman Jeline Olfato agreed Maynard may have been mistaken for someone else, but added the likely reason may have been a basketball game that had become too physical.
Olfato noted that Maynard had his back to the killers and it was getting dark at the time of the shooting.
