Police are set to file perjury charges against a 17-year-old Filipino-American coed, her mother and her uncle for giving false and misleading statements on her alleged abduction at the De La Salle University (DLSU) campus.
“This will serve as a warning to other pretenders not to make a mockery of the police by filing complaints only for their own selfish motives. I will see to it that they reap the consequences of their ill intent,” said Superintendent Vicente Tan, the new chief of the General Assignment Section of the Manila Police District.
Tan noted that there are a number of complainants who concoct their own stories, either for insurance or monetary claims.
He directed his investigators to compel complainants to make sworn statements to make them liable before the courts.
Investigators found the girl’s statements highly improbable. The police said the abduction could not have taken place after she came out of the women’s comfort room since the hallway is equipped with a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera. There are also guards on duty near the comfort room who may be alerted if something “unusual occurred in the area.”
She said she lost a set of diamond earrings and ring worth P120,000, and a wallet containing P4,000 and $200 and ATM cards.
DLSU officials said the girl’s last enrollment was for the third trimester of school year 2007-2008, which ended last April.
The university’s records also show no mention of her name in the campus entry logs on Aug. 1, the date of the alleged incident.
SPO4 Fernando Cantillas, chief of the GAS follow-up unit, is tracing the address given by the coed, who was accompanied by her mother and uncle when she filed the incident with the police. – Nestor Etolle