Kin of Pinay Killed in Maryland Shooting Seek Help

Patrick Quintos, ABS-CBN News

MANILA – The family of the woman killed by her husband in a shooting rampage in Washington is asking the government to help them bring the remains of the Filipina back to the Philippines.

Liezel Glimada said the two daughters left behind by her sister, Gladys Tordil, have also expressed their desire to go back to the Philippines, where all their immediate relatives are based.

Glimada said that Tordil’s daughters are both minors and are on their own now in the United States after their mother was allegedly shot dead by their step father, Eulalio Tordil.

READ: Fil-Am federal officer held after Washington-area shooting spree

“The whole family has been informed about the death of my sister, and everybody agreed to chip in and shoulder the needed expenses so we can bring the body of Gladys and her two surviving daughters back in the Philippines,” Glimada told ABS-CBN News in Filipino in a phone interview Saturday morning, Manila time.

“All we ask for now is assistance from the authorities,” she added.

Tordil, a 44-year-old chemistry teacher in Parkdale High School, was in the parking lot of High Point High School in Maryland, waiting for her daughters to come out, when he was allegedly shot by Eulalio, a 62-year-old police officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service.

Glimada said that the only thing she knows is that her sister has sought a protection order against Eulalio, who also hails from Cotabato, back in March.

This gave Glimada an idea about the problems her sister was facing in the U.S.. She said they never talked about it at length.

“We usually talk online when she has no work,” she said. “I kept our conversations light to cheer her up.”

Glimada recalled that during the last time she spoke with her sister, they were talking about the situation in their hometown, Pikit, North Cotabato, in the southern portion of the Philippines.

Glimada said she was confident that her sister was safe because of the protection order.

But on Friday Manila time, while she was waiting for her sister to go online, it was her niece who went online instead to tell her the bad news.

“One of my nieces even witnessed their stepfather shoot their mother,” she said. “I was really shocked because we thought the protection order was enough to keep them safe.”

As far as Glimada knows, her sister and Eulalio had been together for at least a decade before the relationship went sour.

Aside from killing her estranged wife, Eulalio is also the suspect in a shooting incident in a mall and a grocery store in Maryland.

A Washington Post report quoted authorities that Eulalio threatened to commit “suicide by cop” before he was arrested during a followup operation.

The report added that a plainclothes officer spotted Tordil in a Dunkin’ Donuts store. Police kept him under watch as he walked in and out of stores, but waited until he returned to his car before arresting him, Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger told a news conference.

“We did not want to have a shootout when he was taken into custody,” Manger said.

Surrounded by officers with their weapons drawn, Tordil surrendered without a fight after about five minutes, police said.

Aside from Tordil, two others were reportedly killed in the shooting spree that forced schools and establishments to close down that day the incident happened.

(Source: ABS-CBN.com)