FORENSIC pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun yesterday said the nine activists who died on March 7 in simultaneous police operations in Calabarzon sustained multiple gunshot wounds and were “shot to be killed.”
Fortun presented the findings of the autopsy she and her team from the Department of Pathology of the UP Manila College of Medicine conducted on the victims in an online briefing exactly four months since the incident dubbed as “Bloody Sunday.”
“All of them had shots in the chest area, so they were really shot to be killed. All had multiple gunshot wounds,” Fortun said.
“In a first world country, these are meticulously investigated, especially if state agents are involved. For all of them, each case deserves a homicide investigation,” she added.
Fortun described as “challenging and full of limitations” the conduct of autopsy on the victims — eight males and one female — because the bodies were full of “alterations,” with entry and exit wounds having been sutured.
She added the bodies were in varying states of decomposition and all underwent some degree of embalming.
Despite the challenges, Fortun said they were able to complete the autopsy and found indicative wounds on the victims, like Chai Levita Evangelista whose fingers sustained gunshot wounds, an indicative of a defense type injury.
