Another Cordilleran murdered in Canada -- report
By Vincent Cabreza
Northern Luzon Bureau
First Posted 19:46:00 01/24/2008
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines -- Another Cordilleran has been reported murdered in Canada.
Canadian newspapers reported this week that the "blood soaked body" of Arcelie Laoagan, 40, had been found by subway train workers on Friday behind a church in Calgary, Alberta.
Anthony Basil, Cordillera case officer of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, said Laoagan, a native of Sagada, Mt. Province, was the second migrant worker to fall victim to a crime in Canada in recent months.
Ifugao-born immigrant Jocelyn Dulnuan, 27, was murdered in a plush neighborhood of Mississauga City last October 1. Police have arrested two Latin American immigrants for the murder.
"We now have to address two fatalities from Sagada. We just received home [the body of Sagada native Zennia Aguilan, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan]," Basil said.
The OWWA is awaiting feedback from the country's foreign office in Canada.
Laoagan was reported missing on January 17 when she failed to return home.
According to an online report of the Calgary Herald, she called friends when she was apparently attacked.
Train workers found her sprawled near the Grace Baptist Church in Calgary.
Laoagan's children flew to Calgary this week to identify her body.
Newspapers reported that Laoagan had been working two jobs to sustain a family in Mt. Province, and that she had been a Calgary resident for four years.
But the Cordillera Office of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) has records of Laoagan being deployed to Hong Kong by a local recruitment agency in 2004.
The POEA said Laoagan worked for two years as a maid in Hong Kong.
"Usually, we lose [deployed workers to Hong Kong] as soon as they finish their contracts because it is easy for them to migrate to Canada from there," a POEA official said.
Dulnuan also worked in Hong Kong before she was hired as a maid in Canada.
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