Just meters outside Embassy, where a Christmas tree stood, Neny Montinola, a guest at the same party, was seen groping her way around, saying, "I can't see! I can't see! My eyes are burning!" She was in a panic and clearly in pain. Coming to her rescue, some guests grabbed hold of water, put the water in glasses and a bucket, and threw it at her. Neny was drenched, but the water was clearly not helping because she still moaned about the stinging pain in her eyes. At one point, she was crouching on the ground, in panic.

Taking matters into their hands, movie stars Angelu de Leon and Maricar de Mesa, who had shared a table with Neny at the party, rushed Neny to the Makati Medical Center, the closest hospital to The Fort. Angelu sped away, said one witness approvingly, "like a madwoman," with Neny beside her, while Maricar followed in another car.

Angelu said in a PEP interview days later, "Neny felt parang nasusuka siya. Then nagi-intensify yung burning sensation... Nagwawala na siya." That was when she decided Neny needed to be in a hospital. "Nakababa ang windows para mahanginan ang mukha niya. We went to ER. 'Tapos, flinush siya with sterile water. Kasi kung ordinary water daw, may chlorine pa rin, e."

Quoting the doctor at Makati Medical Center's emergency room, Angelu said, "'Good thing nakakontak [lens] siya kasi direct hit sa mata yung pepper spray, e. Possible na ma-damage yung cornea.'" That was also when she found out that the foul smell at the party, which she thought at first to be "ammonia," was from a pepper spray.

Neither Angelu nor Maricar actually saw the pepper-spraying itself. They said they were saying goodbye to friends at the time. They began heading toward the same exit only after a very foul stench began to fill the club. This odor, Angelu would later realize, was chemical from the pepper spray.

THE PEPPER-SPRAYING. According to witnesses interviewed by PEP, the actual attack happened between 2 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. of November 19. At that hour, Neny had walked toward the club exit. Trish did, too. And so did a few others, like Ricardo, who were scattered in the relatively narrow space closest to the door.

Then Trish moved close to Neny and held her in a hug. One witness said this was strange because the two were not close, and were "mere acquaintances." Seconds later, the witness said she saw Trish pointing the pepper spray up in the air, toward no one in particular. Then Trish pointed it again, this time toward Neny, spraying it directly in Neny's face. After this, the witness said, Trish walked out of the club "alone, casually." Ricardo, who had been saying goodbye to friends, followed her soon after.

THE SUSPECT. Soon, a few more guests began dropping the name of Trish as the "culprit" and "the one who did it."

Trish herself remained silent, except for one phone call to PEP, when she told its managing editor Karen Pagsolingan that she wanted the story killed. When it became clear that PEP would carry the story, she left her boyfriend and date at the Singson party, Ricardo Po, Jr., to answer for her.

On November 26, or seven days after the incident, Ricardo sat down with PEP. A well-mannered and charming man, Ricardo comes from a family with high-stakes investments in food manufacturing and exporting. He has children from a marriage that has been annulled, and is, as our interview made apparent, smitten with Patricia.

He told us that he never saw the incident, and also said that he could not imagine Trish being capable of such an attack. "Trish is not the type that carries weapons. She's not the type. No need." He said he confronted Trish about it after he got a call saying Neny had landed in the hospital and that Trish was a suspect, but that Trish told him, "I don't carry tear gas in my bag."

THE MOTIVE. These days, it is outside players giving answers to the nagging question: Why did this happen?

A blog claiming to know the inside story says that "jealousy" is the reason. Hong Kong-based Kitty Go's blog says that, at a time Trish and Ricardo were having problems, the "lover of sprayer went to Boracay with the victim and a group of friends."

http://chichitsthefan.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html

But a friend of Neny has dismissed the story of Neny and Ricardo vacationing in Boracay together. "Not true," she says categorically, "because they have not spoken to each other for more than a year."