THE mystery over the unidentified body found in the fire-stricken NCCC mall deepens, as police established the time of death to be less than 15 days ago.
Superintendent Georby Manuel, Davao Regional Crime Laboratory Office (RCLO 11) director, said the body is "too fresh" to have been among the fatalities in the December 2017 fire that razed the mall.
A total of 38 people, mostly call center agents, died in the fire. The body was discovered on the third floor of the fire-hit mall on July 11, or more than six months later.
"For me, it is not safe to say that 39 ang fatalities because the estimated death of the last victim was more or less 15 days and the NCCC fire incident (happened last December 2017 pa)," Manuel said Monday, July 16.
Asked whether it was possible that the body might have been left there by somebody, Manuel said that they were not discounting the possibility.
"Possible kasi kung namatay sa sunog buto na lang dapat yan at sunog pa. Yung bangkay na yan may polo at maong pa," he said.
(Had that person died during the fire, what would have been left are the charred bones. The cadaver is still clad in a polo shirt and maong pants.)
Authorities are calling on the public or those who have a missing family member to check out the cadaver for verification.
Manuel said that according to RCLO medico legal officer Police Chief Inspector Nolan Genova, nobody has yet claimed the body.
He described the body to be that of a male 5'5 to 5'7 in height, wearing red polo and denim pants and a watch.
"'Di kasama yan sa nasunog (He was not among those who perished in the fire)," he said.
As of Monday, they have not received any report yet of families who went to see the cadaver.
"Our local police are still trying its best to identify the cadaver," Manuel said.
It was reported that on July 11, the team of the D.M. Consunji, Inc. (DMCI) contracted to demolish the burnt mall discovered the remains at around 5:30 p.m. on the third floor.
Unlike other bodies found after the fire which were charred, this corpse still had clothes on and was decomposing.
It can be recalled that the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) ended their search and retrieval operation of the missing bodies when the body of the last missing victim, SSI quality assurance supervisor Alexandra Moreno-Castillo, was recovered in January, weeks after the fire gutted down the homegrown shopping mall.
