Tragedy befalling the victim and the assailant

IT's not uncommon a plot in Philippine movies that someone who has endured severe physical and emotional beatings and gross injustice realizes that he has had enough. Feeling he has no one else to turn to, he decides to take the matter in his own hands. He arms himself, fights back, and gets arrested by or surrenders to lawmen. Then the curtain falls. And most, if not all, Filipino viewers applaud in a gesture of approval, or in manifest acquiescence, or empathy to the downtrodden taking his sweet revenge.

Chao Tiao Yumol, a physician and gunman, shocked the nation when he shot dead former Lamitan City mayor Rosita Furigay, her aide Victor George Capistrano and Ateneo de Manila University security guard Jeneven Bandiala at the school campus in Quezon City. The lone assailant also injured the former mayor's daughter Hannah, one of the students set to receive her Bachelor of Laws diploma from the university on that fateful day. The public immediately condemned the gruesome act to the "highest degree." But a more prudent and unbiased mind may wonder.