| Imagine yourself along in your organization's tambayan room, typing away on your laptop on one routine afternoon. When someone suddenly barges, threatens to kill you if you don’t sit down, stay quiet, and hand over your valuables, what do you do? Panic? Comply? Reason out? Resist? There is no formal, accurate account yet of what happened when two men attacked UP Diliman political science major Lordei Hina, on that odd afternoon of February 1, 2012 at the student council office in Vinzons Hall. Accused Dan Mar Vicencio, who was accosted in a taxi as he was fleeing the campus, isn’t admitting anything significant, nor saying something substantial. The other accused is missing. |
It’s doubly cruel to leave all the talking to the only other witness to the crime, Lordei herself. What the medical reports say: she was struck with a heavy metal object, and then stabbed several times in the head by an icepick. She was left bleeding on the floor and behind a locked door for about 30 minutes, before she was found.
All brain injuries are delicate and serious. Why else is there no other internal organ wholly encased in bone? The brain is a most fascinating organ, thoroughly complex and fragile, designed to be protected from external contact – so when a rusty icepick so much as touches gray matter, you have to pray for a miracle.
Lordei’s brain was pierced several times, in some places up to an inch. A fleck of skull, dislodged by the violent spearing, settled on the brain surface. Naturally, the brain swelled. Obviously, too, Lordei would have to contend with long-term disabilities in her motor and cognitive skills, as well as her memory.
Thanks to medical intervention, Lordei has recovered enough to be able to resume simple activities and pleasures. She’s hitting the karaoke again, primping up, and being playful. She’s visited UP thrice already, indulging in slow tours of the campus she has walked through a thousand times over. But it’s nowhere near how she was before the incident.
Lordei is a trusted, recognizable, and reliable student leader in UP Diliman. In fact, on the Monday before she was attacked, she represented me as student regent in a meeting with the dean of the College of Engineering regarding our campaign for higher state subsidy. She always had a lot of ideas about reaching out to other students, especially those she found stressed and hunched down with their calculators and programming exercises. Lordei, for me, will forever be a student keen on solving problems whether in and out of the classroom.
It was no surprise, then, that the students she networked with were the first ones to respond to a call for help. Within a day, coins and crumpled P20 bills were handed over in envelopes, plastic bags and donation boxes. In July, a large and varied selection of artists clinched the success of an art benefit and cake raffle. Just last week, an Engineering-based fraternity organized a cultural night and a fun(d) run.
Her friends and activists have also pledged to seek justice, together with lawyer Eric Mesoga who is diligently building and strengthening Lordei’s case in court. On the first actual trial day, a year after the incident, a small battalion of UP students camped out in front of the Quezon City Hall of Justice with their school books and placards. This was as if to announce to the accused, to the prosecutors, to the judge, and to the whole world: we’re watching all of you.
And while the road to Lordei’s recovery may be paved with all our good intentions, there’s still so much reality to contend with. I can only imagine the strain and pressure on Tita Connie, a single mother, to earn enough to pay for overdue hospital bills (standing now at about P2 million) and continuous rehabilitation fees (some P100,000 per month). Imagine how Lordei wakes up everyday with a hazy feeling that she should be remembering more than she does. Imagine how her brother Carlo worries over his ate (elder sister) as the role of protector settles over his shoulder now, and over all of their futures which had been so bright and promising when 2012 came in.
All this is enough to break people less tough. But as long as Lordei, Carlo and Tita Connie aren’t dwelling on the what ifs and falling apart, why should we?
Krissy Conti is a coordinator of Task Force Lordei Hina. Donations direct to the Hina family are welcome at Ma. Concepcion Hina BDO – Paseo-Gil Puyat Branch Peso Savings Account: 2780 246 533. Other forms of support may be coordinated through the Task Force facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TaskForceLordeiHina.
Original published on The Philippine Online Chronicles http://thepoc.net/component/k2/17876-the-unimaginable-ordeal-of-lordei-hina
All brain injuries are delicate and serious. Why else is there no other internal organ wholly encased in bone? The brain is a most fascinating organ, thoroughly complex and fragile, designed to be protected from external contact – so when a rusty icepick so much as touches gray matter, you have to pray for a miracle.
Lordei’s brain was pierced several times, in some places up to an inch. A fleck of skull, dislodged by the violent spearing, settled on the brain surface. Naturally, the brain swelled. Obviously, too, Lordei would have to contend with long-term disabilities in her motor and cognitive skills, as well as her memory.
Thanks to medical intervention, Lordei has recovered enough to be able to resume simple activities and pleasures. She’s hitting the karaoke again, primping up, and being playful. She’s visited UP thrice already, indulging in slow tours of the campus she has walked through a thousand times over. But it’s nowhere near how she was before the incident.
Lordei is a trusted, recognizable, and reliable student leader in UP Diliman. In fact, on the Monday before she was attacked, she represented me as student regent in a meeting with the dean of the College of Engineering regarding our campaign for higher state subsidy. She always had a lot of ideas about reaching out to other students, especially those she found stressed and hunched down with their calculators and programming exercises. Lordei, for me, will forever be a student keen on solving problems whether in and out of the classroom.
It was no surprise, then, that the students she networked with were the first ones to respond to a call for help. Within a day, coins and crumpled P20 bills were handed over in envelopes, plastic bags and donation boxes. In July, a large and varied selection of artists clinched the success of an art benefit and cake raffle. Just last week, an Engineering-based fraternity organized a cultural night and a fun(d) run.
Her friends and activists have also pledged to seek justice, together with lawyer Eric Mesoga who is diligently building and strengthening Lordei’s case in court. On the first actual trial day, a year after the incident, a small battalion of UP students camped out in front of the Quezon City Hall of Justice with their school books and placards. This was as if to announce to the accused, to the prosecutors, to the judge, and to the whole world: we’re watching all of you.
And while the road to Lordei’s recovery may be paved with all our good intentions, there’s still so much reality to contend with. I can only imagine the strain and pressure on Tita Connie, a single mother, to earn enough to pay for overdue hospital bills (standing now at about P2 million) and continuous rehabilitation fees (some P100,000 per month). Imagine how Lordei wakes up everyday with a hazy feeling that she should be remembering more than she does. Imagine how her brother Carlo worries over his ate (elder sister) as the role of protector settles over his shoulder now, and over all of their futures which had been so bright and promising when 2012 came in.
All this is enough to break people less tough. But as long as Lordei, Carlo and Tita Connie aren’t dwelling on the what ifs and falling apart, why should we?
Krissy Conti is a coordinator of Task Force Lordei Hina. Donations direct to the Hina family are welcome at Ma. Concepcion Hina BDO – Paseo-Gil Puyat Branch Peso Savings Account: 2780 246 533. Other forms of support may be coordinated through the Task Force facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TaskForceLordeiHina.
Original published on The Philippine Online Chronicles http://thepoc.net/component/k2/17876-the-unimaginable-ordeal-of-lordei-hina