ILOILO City – Slain overseas Filipino worker Angelo Claveria of Cabatuan, Iloilo wanted to look for another job, according to his family.
During a brief vacation in 2015, he promised to work doubly hard in South Korea so he could finally finish their house’s renovation, according to his mother Angelita.
But the 34-year-old Marine Transportation graduate working as a metal cutter at a factory in the city of Hwaseong, Gyeonggi province, South Korea failed to fulfill his promise. He was killed.
“Whoever did that to my son should be arrested,” said Angelita whose search for her missing son ended on Monday when South Korea’s consulate in Cebu confirmed that the skeletal remains found in a septic tank of a water purifier plant in Hwaseong was her son’s.
“The culprit should also suffer a fate similar to my son’s, or even worse,” said Angelita.
Claveria took a short one-month vacation to Cabatuan in September 2015. He returned to South Korea the following month and had not communicated to his family since January 2016.
Angelita said the last time she was able to talk to her son was on Christmas eve of 2015.
He had not mentioned any problem during his brief vacation, the mother said.
Angelita said the identification and arrest of her son’s killer or killers could, to a certain degree, assuage her family’s pain.
She described her son as “waay gamo nga bata (not a trouble-maker).”
South Korean authorities were zeroing in on another overseas Filipino worker as suspect, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Claveria left for South Korea in 2014. His skeletal remains were found just last month.
It was only in February this year when his family reported Claveria missing, prompted by the discovery of the body of slain Ilongga domestic helper Joanny Demafelis of Sara, Iloilo inside a freezer in Kuwait.
According to Claveria’s sister Jeanette, someone completely emptied her brother’s bank account. She believed the culprit was the killer, too.
Jeanette revealed on Facebook it was a friend of her brother that informed their family about the skeletal remains found in a septic tank in South Korea.
“We had hoped those were not his. We prayed for a miracle,” according to Jeanette.
On April 20, a team from South Korea’s consulate in Cebu took DNA samples from Claveria’s mother Angelita at the DFA regional consular office here.
On May 7, the South Korean consulate informed the Claveria family that Angelita’s DNA matched with the DNA samples from the skeletal remains found at Hwaseong./PN
