A 28-year-old Filipino man identified as Darren Manaog Peñaredondo has died after he was allegedly asked by the police to do 300 squats after he was caught flouting COVID-19 curfew rules.
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Darren was said to have been caught by the authorities by drinking water at his city of General Trias, Cavite at 6 PM on April 1 while there is a curfew imposed in the city.
Mr. Penaredondo and others caught breaking the curfew were ordered to do 100 squat-like exercises at a shopping plaza, according to Adrian Lucena, the victim’s relative.
Authorities reportedly told them they’d have to repeat the exercises if they weren’t in sync, and the group ended up doing it 300 times, according to him.
Darren returned home with the help of some of the curfew violators around 8:00 AM the following morning.
Darren’s partner, Reichelyn Balce, told Rappler that Mr. Penaredondo was clearly in agony and struggled to walk the whole way home.
“That whole day, he struggled to walk, he was just crawling on the floor just to get up,” Balce said. “But I did not take that seriously because he said his knees and thighs were aching, as was his body,” he said.
Darren passed away after he suffered a seizure later that night at 10 PM.
However, the police chief of General Trias City, Marlo Solero has debunked claims that Darren died as a result of the punishment he was given by the policemen that night.
In fact, he said that violators of the curfew rules are not made to do exercises but rather, are given lectures or made to do some community works. He said that they have video proof that the violators were not ordered by the policemen to do any squats as claimed by the relative.
However, the Philippine government has extended a lockdown by another week after an alarming spike in coronavirus infections continued to surge and started to overwhelm many hospitals in the capital and outlying regions.
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