JEDDAH, 8 December 2004 — When the US Consulate General in Jeddah came under attack on Monday, Jenny dela Rosa was one of the first to know. Jenny got a call from her husband, Romeo L. dela Rosa, who was employed as telephone technician in the consulate.
“We are under attack. I’m alright but Jun is injured and don’t tell his wife yet so as not to alarm her,” was dela Rosa’s calm advice to Jenny via his cell phone at around 11 a.m.
The Jun that dela Rosa referred to was Wenceslao Pescante Jr., a supplies office supervisor at the US Consulate General, who was among the first hit when extremists burst into the consulate complex with guns blazing.
Dela Rosa assured his wife that he was in a safe place and that she should not worry about him. He also told her not to call him and to just wait for his call.
Jenny waited but the call never came. Her attempts to contact him proved futile. At around 12 midnight, she confirmed her worst fears when Consul General Dino Lomondot and other consulate officials accompanied her and some of her close friends to the Al-Mahajar morgue.
There at the morgue lay her husband, calm under fire about 12 hours ago, lifeless. He had a gunshot wound on his left temple that exited in the lower left nape, suggesting that he was shot from a close range.
The circumstances of dela Rosa’s death were unclear but some of the consulate staff wounded in the broad daylight attack said the militants had tried to use them as human shields.
He was still wearing his work ID, but his mobile phone appeared to be missing.
In all, five consulate employees were killed — dela Rosa, one Yemeni, a Sudanese, a Pakistani and a Sri Lankan — and four others, including Pescante, were injured.
Police said the four other fatalities were all “terrorists.”
“This was totally unexpected,” was all Jenny could say, her eyes bloodshot from crying overnight. She broke down while her husband’s body was lowered from the thermal truck at the morgue.
Charles, their 10-year-old son, also broke down while looking at the bloodied body of his father.
The 44-year-old dela Rosa, from Gen. Malvar street in Manila’s old district of Tondo, has been an employee of the US Consulate in Jeddah for the past 12 years. Jenny remembered her husband as a loving person whose concern for others was exceptional, such as when he worried about how Pescante’s wife would take the news even as he himself was in extreme peril.
Jenny remembered her husband as a loving person whose concern for others is exceptional.
Consul General Lomondot said that they would make sure that dela Rosa’s remains will be repatriated as soon as all necessary documents from the US Consulate had been obtained.
Lomondot and Labor Attaché Nasser Munder also visited the 56-year-old Pescante at the intensive care unit of the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital and were told that the patient was now out of danger.
Dr. Ashraf Baker, the attending physician, said a bullet is lodged in Pescante’s left knee and it is unlikely that they will remove the bullet. He explained that a surgery to take the bullet out is riskier, possibly leading to paralysis.
Pescante, who comes from Makati City, was hit by a stray bullet in the knee while entering the gate of the consulate during the attack, officials said.
