Driving dangerously

This is the cost of irresponsible driving:

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

As of Monday morning, Cynthia Masongsong was recuperating from surgery to stop internal bleeding of the spleen. Because of her critical condition, she had not yet been told by her family that she had lost her only child, four-year-old Malia, in the accident on Sunday at the NAIA Terminal 1 that caused Cynthia serious injury.

Mother, daughter and Cynthia's mom-in-law had gone to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to see off Malia's father, Danmark Masongsong, who was flying out to the Czech Republic where he works as a machine operator, after a three-week vacation in the Philippines.

But what was supposed to be a happy family event turned into tragedy after a Ford Everest suddenly accelerated from a parking slot at the NAIA departure area and plowed into the crowd of passengers and well-wishers at the entrance.

The SUV pinned to death Malia and 29-year-old Dearick Keo Faustino, a company supervisor who was supposed to go on a business trip to Dubai. Faustino reportedly supported his siblings and elderly father.

That was Danmark wailing in a heartbreaking video that the girl pinned under the Everest was his child: "Anak ko 'yan! Anak ko 'yan!"

The SUV driver, Leo Sinlao Gonzales, 47, had dropped off his employer at the terminal. Holder of a professional driver's license and reportedly a former overseas worker himself, Gonzales said he got confused. Now in police custody and facing years in prison for a double homicide and multiple physical injuries, he tested negative for drugs and alcohol.

In another horrible vehicular accident last week in Tarlac, families are also grieving over four children and their four adult guardians, while a two-year-old boy has become an orphan after his parents, together with the eight others, were crushed to death.