Actress Cynthia Patag as well as former Apo Hiking Society member Jim Paredes and his wife Lydia are under fire, after a false Facebook post about the death of musician Noli Asensio went viral over the weekend.
The brouhaha started when a post by Patag entitled “He wasn’t poor” with the byline of “Lydia M. Paredes.”, where a certain Ana Segovia claimed that Noli Asensio was “abducted” and “drugged” before his death, and was a victim of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.
According to the post, Lydia Paredes received a private message from Segovia who mentioned that Asensio was her cousin. The content of Patag’s post was denied by Asensio’s ex-wife Iwi Laurel and daughter Nicole. Iwi clarified on social media that Noli was neither abducted nor drugged, and was not a victim of the government’s anti-drug campaign. Nicole then shared her mother’s post and added that the post was meant to politicize their father’s death.
Paredes then explained and apologized in an open letter to Iwi and Nicole that Patag’s post was apparently Segovia’s private message to his wife and “some friends” to seek confirmation about the circumstances of Asensio’s death, and had no intention of politicizing.
