MalacaÑang on Sunday condoled with the family of Lauro Vizconde, co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, who died Saturday afternoon at a Parañaque City hospital after suffering four successive heart attacks.
Vizconde was 78.
“Mr. Vizconde served as a member of the Board of Directors of Intercontinental Broadcasting Corp., a government-supervised television network, since 2008,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said during an interview over state-run radio station dzRB.
Vizconde founded the VACC with current chairman Dante Jimenez in 1998 as a movement to pursue justice for victims of heinous crimes.
Jimenez said Vizconde was rushed to the Unihealth Parañaque Hospital and Medical Center in Sucat at 8 p.m. on Thursday after complaining of weakness.
Vizconde, prior to his death, lived at the same house in Parañaque City where his wife Estrelita, 49, and daughters Carmela, 18, and Jennifer, 6, were all murdered on June 30, 1991. Carmela was also raped.
Jimenez said it was at the hospital that Vizconde had the series of four heart attacks. The last one sent him to the hospital’s ICU.
On Friday night, Jimenez said Vizconde’s relatives informed doctors of their wish to detach him from a life support system.
Jimenez related that the Supreme Court decision to acquit all those convicted for the murder of Vizconde’s wife and two daughters caused his health to deteriorate.
“His health was aggravated by the acquittal. He lost his will to live,” Jimenez said.
Vizconde was in the United States on a business trip when the crime happened.
Several arrested suspects, including former Senator Freddie Webb’s son Hubert, were put on trial and convicted of the crime in 2000.
The Supreme Court, however, overturned the decision in 2010 and acquitted all of the convicts, who had been detained since 1995.
