Road rage: angles

One can approach the incident involving David Lim Jr., a businessman’s son, and Ephraim Nuñal, a nurse, in different angles. The first angle is obvious, that this is a road rage case. The other angle is what Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña is encouraging us to think, that this is about the rich and the poor. The third is post-incident: the mayor’s overkill of a reaction.

I am a driver and I learned a lesson from this incident. I am easily angered when fellow drivers get aggressive and disobey traffic rules. Nuñal claimed Lim’s car, a Mercedes Benz, zigzagged and stopped in the middle of the road, prompting him to honk the horn of his vehicle, a Toyota Altis. Lim and his companion, a girl, got out of the car, and so did Nuñal get out of his vehicle. That’s the recipe for a confrontation. From there, the situation deteriorated fast.

This has always been my argument against gun possession. When you have a gun, you tend to use it offensively, like in an altercation, and not defensively. I thought about that when I was still with dyLA and had to walk from the pier area to Colon going home at night. One time, two men attempted to physically harm me, forcing me to run. When they stopped chasing me after about 100 meters, I paused and waited until they started walking away and surreptitiously followed them.

I was angry. If only I have a gun, I told myself. But what if I did have a gun? What would I have done? That was the realization later.

Lawyer Orlando Salatandre, who appeared as Lim’s legal counsel when he surrendered to the Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 yesterday, claimed that what his client did was self defense and that the video footage that has gone viral on the altercation did not tell the entire story. Indeed, the video showed a Lim different from what Salatandre portrayed him during the altercation.

The video showed a typical road rage scene, with one side having a gun. Remember the Rolito Go-Eldon Maguan road rage case in 1991? Go, a businessman, had a fight with his girlfriend. He drove his vehicle into a one-way street, going in the opposite direction. He almost bumped a car driven by Eldon Maguan, a student, who was out to buy pizza. Go got out of his vehicle and shot Maguan, who was still inside his car. He died days later.

But should we take this recent case in the context of rich vs. poor? That can be partly true in the sense that Lim belongs to a rich family that can be influential if it wants to while Nuñal is an ordinary professional. Consider Lim having Salatandre, who was once fugitive Ruben Ecleo’s lawyer, as legal counsel. And wasn’t Secretary Christopher “Bong” Go,” President Rodrigo Duterte’s special assistant, the one who announced Lim’s surrender?

But that does not mean I agree with Mayor Osmeña being OA (over acting). That was actually what I felt when I saw the mayor lead fully armed policemen, including Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) personnel, in the search for Lim (before his surrender). Photos and video footage of the raids showed the raiders like they were in a war zone. In TV interviews, the mayor also showed a very angry face.

Then again, with the way Lim was treated during his surrender, I think the mayor acting OA can be justified.