Wala ba tayong Tatay?

He was in Grade 9. Katorse o kinse — bawal nating sabihin ang kaniyang pangalan, dahil sa RA 9344, ang Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act. But the law that protects him from us is the only law in this story that anybody actually followed.

At around 7:50 on Tuesday morning, before Zamboanga had finished its coffee, he walked into the high school department of Ateneo de Zamboanga University in Barangay Tumaga carrying a long firearm and a .45-caliber pistol. He was wearing a body camera. Naka-Facebook Live pa siya habang umaakyat sa hagdan.

Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso says he went for a teacher first, seated at a table, and missed. Lumipat siya sa kabilang room. On the fourth floor he shot a Grade 10 student, a year above him, and that boy died. Dalawa pa ang nasugatan. Then he went up to the fifth floor and died there — at hanggang ngayon, hindi masabi ng gobyerno kung paano. Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla says he jumped. He also said investigators were still checking whether the boy had shot himself first, because the head wound was, in his own word, “apparent” — hindi raw ganoon ang nakasanayan nila.

Two children are dead. ’Yan ang bilang ng mayor. ’Yan ang bilang ni Fr. Ernald Andal, the university president. That is the number the President of the Republic used in his statement.

It was not the only number published on Tuesday. One national broadsheet ran four dead — two students, two security guards, nine injured — citing the National Bureau of Investigation. Wire services in Turkey and India picked it up and sent it around the world. By afternoon, no one had reconciled the two numbers in public.

Start there, dahil sapat na ’yon para maintindihan mo ang lahat. Six hours after a school shooting, the Philippine state could not agree on how many of its children were dead.

Sino siya

Hindi siya batang laking laylayan. He was not radicalized in some far-flung barangay by men with a cause.

His father — kinumpirma mismo ni Customs Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno — is a district commander of the Bureau of Customs’ Enforcement and Security Services in Zamboanga. Nepomuceno relieved him within the day so the investigation would not be compromised, at sinabi ang sasabihin ng kahit sinong disenteng tao sa posisyon niya: “Nalulungkot nga ako dahil na-involve pa ’yung anak niya.”

The BOC has a standing policy allowing the commissioner to issue firearms to enforcement personnel. Whether the rifle and the pistol his son carried up those stairs came from the government of the Republic of the Philippines is, as of this writing, still being established. One of the two weapons had been fitted with a conversion kit.

Kung totoo ito, basahin mo ulit ’yan, dahan-dahan. The state armed the house. The house armed the child. And the child carried the state’s own guns into a classroom and livestreamed what he did with them.

Why he did it, nobody yet knows. Police spokeswoman Shella Chang said Tuesday that they were still trying to identify a motive. But motive is the smallest question in this story. Lahat ng bansa may nasisirang bata. Hindi lahat ng bansa nag-aabot sa kanila ng rifle at ng hagdanang walang nagbabantay.

Ang ipinangako sa atin

June 22. San Jose National High School, Tacloban City. A 14-year-old and a 15-year-old opened fire during class. Chris Lorenz Fabian, 15. Joyancee Separa, 15. Ayessa Nicole Dazo, 14. Around twenty wounded. Mga apatnapung basyo sa sahig. One of the guns belonged to a suspect’s aunt — a police officer.

Then the machinery of Philippine grief began to turn. Kabisado na natin ang bawat hakbang. At wala pa ring nagbabago.

June 25: a DepEd undersecretary went on morning television and called the incidents “medyo isolated pa rin.” June 26: Education Secretary Sonny Angara convened every regional director and ordered handheld metal detectors, bag inspections, visitor controls, CCTV, active-shooter protocols, anonymous reporting lines, a nationwide security audit. July 1: the Senate opened a televised inquiry. Nag-utos ang Pangulo ng masusing imbestigasyon at heightened security.

Fifty-seven days later, nakapasok ang isang Grade 9 na may dalang rifle sa gate ng isa sa pinakarespetadong paaralan sa Mindanao.

And here is the detail that should cost somebody his job: Angara’s directive covered public schools. Pribado ang Ateneo de Zamboanga. Two months after three children were shot dead in a classroom, the Republic had not extended a single mandatory security requirement to the schools where millions of other children spend their mornings.

On Tuesday, the President of the Philippines said our schools “must also be among the safest places in our country,” and ordered a thorough investigation.

Nag-utos din siya ng masusing imbestigasyon noong Hunyo.

Peace and order?

Hindi ito nagsimula sa schoolyard. There are roughly two million loose firearms in this country by the last serious count — unregistered, expired, o hindi naman talaga naging legal. A former senator told the Senate that 99.95 percent of gun-related crime here is committed with them. From 2015 to 2023, the state recovered about eight percent of them. The government is outgunned by its own citizens by roughly seven to one.

That is not a crime statistic. That is the description of a state that does not hold a monopoly on force inside its own borders — which, in every textbook ever written, is the one thing a state is actually for.

So what did we get? Metal detectors. Yung hawak-hawak. For some of the schools. Announced at a press conference.

Ang solusyon sa dalawang milyong baril, isang metal detector sa gate.

Ang tanong

I know where the argument goes next, at mag-iingat ako, because we have been here before, at alam natin ang naging presyo. The answer to a weak state is not a cruel one. Halos napuno na natin ng bangkay ang kalsada. Hindi naman nabawasan ang baril.

But something has gone out of this country, at dapat nating mapangalanan ’yon nang hindi tayo pinaparatangang naghahanap ng diktador.

Wala nang natatakot. Pati mga batang dapat ay nag-aaral, handang pumatay at magpakamatay.

Not the agency that cannot account for its own service firearms. Hindi ang kagawarang nagsabing “isolated” ang isang pattern, tatlong araw bago mangakong aayusin ito. Not the officials who will attend Thursday’s hearing, express grave concern, and go home. At hindi ang bata — na naintindihan niya, gaya ng pagkaintindi ng mga bata sa Tacloban, who had read that same law before they fired, na hindi siya aabutin ng batas.

Hindi batas ang nagbubuklod sa isang bansa. Ang nagbubuklod ay ang paniniwalang may nakatingin, may nagbabantay, may kikilos, may sasagot at may mananagot. Kapag nawala ’yon, papel na lang ang batas, palabas na lang ang metal detector. At ang nawawala, bata man o matanda, ay ang paniniwalang dapat sundin ang batas dahil ito ang tama — at dahil may pananagutan ang bawat isa sa masama o mabuti niyang ginagawa.

Now we end with a Grade 10 boy who went to school in Zamboanga on Tuesday morning at hindi na nakauwi. May Grade 9 na umakyat sa fifth floor at hindi na bumaba.

Pareho silang anak ng isang tao.

Alam natin ang pakiramdam kapag may tatay. Natatakot ka sa kaniya — pero panatag ka. Natatakot ka hindi dahil sinasaktan ka niya, kundi dahil ayaw mo siyang biguin. At habang natatakot ka, alam mong mahal ka niya, at siya ang haharang kapag may dumating na masama.

Hindi diktador ang hinahanap ko. Tatay.

Ang takot na walang pagmamahal ay panunupil. Ang pagmamahal na walang takot ay kapabayaan. Kailangan ng bansa ang dalawa.

Wala na nga ba tayong tatay?

Disclosure

Research, document retrieval, and the initial verification of the public record were done with the help of an AI tool. The editorial judgment — what to pursue, what to include, what to leave out, and what it all means — and the final words are the author’s own. The author takes sole responsibility for what is published here.

Facts as of the evening of August 18, 2026. The casualty count and the exact circumstances of the suspect’s death remain officially unreconciled; both are flagged as such in the text. The author welcomes corrections.

If you or someone you know needs help: NCMH Crisis Hotline — 1553 (Luzon-wide landline, toll-free), 0917-899-8727, or (02) 7989-8727.