Vendor gets death for abducting, raping 5-month-old baby

TACLOBAN CITY — At about 6 p.m. of Feb. 20, 2000, Alicia Villamor found her five-month-old baby girl missing inside their home. Police later informed her that her child was found at a plaza some two kilometers away from this city’s central police station.

Villamor was horrified by what she saw: her baby was totally naked and her vagina was bleeding.

Suspect Pamuel Magno, an ice cream vendor, was arrested a few hours later. Last week, Judge Crisostomo Garrido sentenced him to death for kidnapping with rape.

A prosecution witness, 14-year-old Roberto Dacoy, testified that he was fetching water near Magno’s house when he saw the convict carrying a baby. He later learned about a baby gone missing when he arrived home.

Another witness, truck driver Marcelino Malinao, said he saw Magno sexually molesting the baby and that her vagina was already bleeding, prompting him to call the police.

Magno, in his testimony, claimed that he was sleeping inside his home in Barangay 37 when the incident happened.

But Garrido dismissed Magno’s alibi as a weak defense.

"It is one of the weakest defenses in criminal cases and it should be rejected when the identity of the accused is sufficiently established by the prosecution," he said.

He ordered Magno to pay the victim’s family P50,000 as indemnity and P50,000 more for moral damages.