KM Viray
Netizen Adrian Tan posted screenshots of posts a girl named Rox Cecilio Lizardo. In the posts, Lizardo was laughing over the fact her father shot their neighbor’s dog in Calamba City, Laguna.
Lizardo posted a status on Facebook about how the dog was noisy, which prompted her father to shoot it. Lizardo used the hashtag #medyoghetto with laughing emojis. One of Lizardo’s Facebook friends reacted by saying, “Thuglife ah!!!” while laughing as well and Lizardo responded by saying they found the incident funny, especially when the dog was killed and how the owner was crying. She even boasted that the dog apparently had a pedigree. Lizardo didn’t stop there, she even said, “Mainit init pdaw yung aso. Pede padaw magtanin ng kamote. [The dog’s body was still warm enough to plant sweet potato on.]”
Lizardo also posted updates on her Twitter account. She again posted how her father shot the defenseless animal and how she couldn’t get over what her father did. It all started to backfire on her, however, when she found out her post had begun to go viral. In her tweet, she said “Naging viral pala yung post ko. Sorry. [I’m sorry my post went viral.]”
It was too late to take anything back. Many enraged netizens tagged various groups such as the Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and PROGUN PHILIPPINES to take action. With Tan’s post being shared over and over, Lizardo expressed her insights regarding the matter in a private message. She said it wasn’t her intention to laugh at what happened to the dog. She said that she, in fact, felt pity for the poor dog and she couldn’t control herself posting about the incident. She said she wanted to apologize publicly for what she did and pleaded for netizens to stop sharing the post.
That won’t stop many netizens, however. After all that has been said and done—not to mention all the hahahas in her posts, many netizens feel Lizardo only felt the need to apologize when her name and reputation were already at stake. How could she have felt pity for the dog when she even posted how much a “thug” her father was and bragged about it? She even said, “Tawa kami ng tawa. [We kept laughing.]”
On a related note, an Elaine Fermin posted how her dog was shot without any reason by a former policeman named Dominador “Ding” Capispisan. Many netizens are saying this was the dog Lizardo’s father killed, but further investigation and verification are still needed.
UPDATE
It has been clarified that the wounded dog netizen Elaine Fermin showed on Facebook was not the same dog shot by Lizardo’s father. In her statement, Fermin confirmed the dog to be hers, but said she has never met Lizardo or her father. Furthermore, they resided in Bulacan and not in Laguna.
Nonetheless, it is a travesty that such acts are committed and poor defenseless animals suffer from such human behavior.
Banner photo from Coleen Sarte.
