MANILA, Philippines - Police consider the killing of a 16-year-old girl in San Jose, Antique last Jan. 31 as “practically solved” after a boy of the same age owned up to the crime.
Chief Superintendent Isagani Cuevas, Region 6 police director, said the young suspect gave himself up to the San Jose police last Feb. 5 and executed an affidavit admitting the crime in the presence of his lawyer-father and a municipal social worker.
The other day, President Arroyo ordered Philippine National Police chief Director General Jesus Versoza “to attend to the case with dispatch,” said Press Secretary Cerge Remonde.
Cuevas said they were still awaiting DNA test results on the seminal fluid taken from the victim to determine if she was raped.
The teenage suspect denied that he molested the victim, saying he was only after her boyfriend, also a minor, with whom he had a grudge but had to kill her because she witnessed the whole incident.
The victim and her boyfriend were hit with a piece of wood. She died from traumatic injuries in the head, while he survived, telling probers that there was only one attacker.
Cuevas belied reports that the victim was gang-raped and that her genitals were stuffed with sand, plastic and pieces of wood when her body, naked from the waist down, was found. – With Marvin Sy