8-year-old boy beaten by drunken dad dies in hospital

COTABATO CITY— The eight-year-old boy who was badly beaten by his drunken father died in a hospital at dawn Thursday, exactly two days after the incident in Barangay Fatima in General Santos City. 

Officials of the General Santos City Police Office and physicians at the Doctor Jorge Royeca Hospital confirmed to reporters on Thursday morning the demise of the victim.

The General Santos CPO, in a report to Region 12 police director Brig. Gen. Jimili Macaraeg, said that corresponding criminal cases had been filed against Roy Canlaon, Jr., father Yuri, whose cadaver is now in a mortuary.

Canlaon, a carpenter, has been detained since Tuesday after he slapped Yuri repeatedly, lifted him overhead and slammed him on the ground for refusing to buy for him another bottle of liquor somewhere outside of their yard.

“I was so drunk then when I did it. I am ready to suffer the consequences of having done that to my son,” he told reporters in Cebuano vernacular, who went to see him in a police detention facility to tell him that his injured son had passed away.

He sat at one side of the cell and cried out loudly after talking to reporters.