A What Th - ? Moment

someone's brain lacked proper development. too bad its owned by someone who's supposed to be shaping future generations.

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Girl dies after eating pencil shavings
by JRU, PDI


EVERY AFTERNOON, nine-year-old Delmar Redota's (earlier reported as Madel Redota) playmates would flock to her house in Taguig City to attend her "classes."

On Wednesday, they came to pay their final respects to their friend who had wanted to become a teacher someday.

Redota, a Grade II pupil at the Silangan Elementary School Main in Barangay Upper Bicutan had died before dawn, exactly a week after a teacher allegedly forced her to swallow pencil shavings in class.

The teacher, identified as Brenda Elbambuena, was sweeping the floor after recess when someone in the class threw pencil shavings into the air, Dr. Remedios Antonio, the school principal, said.

Believing that it was Redota and another student behind the prank, Elbambuena reportedly ordered them to eat the shavings.

"Her classmate just faked eating the shavings. But my daughter really swallowed them," the girl's mother, Diana, tearfully told the Inquirer yesterday.

When Delmar came home from school later that day, she was pale and had a poor appetite, she recalled.

"Usually, when she comes home after school in the afternoon, she would play teacher with the other kids in the neighborhood. But that day, she did not go out of the house," Diana said.

She added that her daughter never told her about the incident. "She was a very quiet child. She was a good girl... she wanted to be a teacher someday," she added.

Two days after the incident, Delmar came down with a fever. On Tuesday, her parents discovered that she had developed acute tonsillitis and pneumonia, allegedly because of the pencil shavings she had swallowed.

At around 4 a.m. the following day, she had difficulty in breathing. Her parents rushed her to the Rizal Medical Center in Pasig City where she was declared dead on arrival.

Diana complained to the school principal the next day. But Elbambuena, who was just substituted for another teacher when the incident occurred, was absent and was believed to have gone into hiding.

Diana, however, was hesitant to press charges against the teacher. All that they want, she said, was a decent burial for their daughter.