“Patay na asawa mo.” This was the last text message LA Francisco received from her partner, Daniel Soria, on September 2, 2023.

Motorcycle-riding gunmen shot 20-year-old Daniel outside a 7-11 store in Malabon. He was with Reynaldo Bolivar, a murder suspect. He was the one Navotas police were looking for when they killed 17-yr-old Jemboy Baltazar by mistake, thinking Baltazar was Bolivar.

Daniel was initially hit in the legs while Reynaldo was able to escape.

The death of Jemboy Baltazar haunts me. The video of his body after being retrieved by a relative from the river resembled another pieta-like image. The many layers of injustice reminded me of the thousands of killings committed during Duterte’s Drug War.(1/7) Jemboy's mother, Rodalisa Baltazar, an OFW in Qatar, had to return home after police killed her son, mistakenly identifying him as a murder suspect in Navotas on Aug. 2, 2023.(2/7)

Exactly four years ago today, I photographed this image that would later be called “pieta.”

On July 23, 2016, under a footbridge along Edsa Pasay Rotonda, Jennilyn Olayres cradled her partner Michael Siaron after being shot to death by motorcycle-riding gunmen. It was a traumatic night for many reasons. Traumatic to me because to this day, the voice of Olayres still lingers in my mind.

"May tao dito," said a voice from behind the bookshelf after the team of Commission on Human Rights (CHR) knocked on the walls of the Drug Enforcement Unit office of Manila Police Station 1, Tondo, Manila during a surprise jail visit on April 27, 2017. Behind the bookshelf, a dozen men and women were found crammed inside a hidden lock-up cell—only a meter wide and 5 meters in length. Many of the detainees claimed that they have been inside the cell for almost a week without formal charges.