The household of the 14-year-old accused in last week’s deadly shooting at San Jose National High School has abandoned its home in Barangay 85 and is believed to have moved to the capital, according to neighbors and village officials.
Footage recorded Friday and reported by The Manila Times showed the family’s property in San Jose standing empty. Residents in the area told the paper that the household cleared out on Thursday before heading to Manila, where the family is thought to have relatives.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer, citing a barangay official who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported that the boy’s parents departed together with his grandparents that same day. The official, who said the teenager’s grandfather sits on the barangay council, described the boy as withdrawn and someone who kept to himself in the neighborhood.
Both the 14-year-old and his 15-year-old classmate remain in the care of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, where they are being held at a government-run rehabilitation facility. Their handling falls under Republic Act No. 9344, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, which shields children 15 and below from criminal prosecution and instead routes them into intervention programs.
That legal threshold has shaped how the two are being treated. Police filed three counts of murder, three counts of frustrated murder, and several counts of serious physical injuries against the 15-year-old before the Tacloban City Prosecutor’s Office, while the younger boy was placed under an intervention track rather than charged.
The June 22 attack left three students dead and around 20 others hurt after the pair opened fire inside the Tacloban campus. Investigators have said the assault appeared planned, with police pointing to leaked message exchanges in which the two discussed the juvenile justice law and assumed it would shield them from liability.
