Cebu police arrest mother accused of beating her 6-year-old son to death

CEBU CITY, Philippines- A six-year-old boy, for refusing to take fever medicine,  was believed to have been beaten to death by his own mother two days before the New Year in the town of San Remigio in northern Cebu.

The child, Kent Joseph del Rosario, was believed to have died under suspicious circumstances inside his house in Barangay Maño, a hinterland village some eight kilometers from the town proper, on December 30, 2018.

P03 Rino Inso, the desk officer on duty at the San Remegio Police Station, told Cebu Daily News by phone on New Year’s Day that the child’s mother, Thelma Cabataña, who was the primary suspect in the child’s death, was arrested only today, January 1, 2019.  

SPO3 Joe John Ynot, the investigator in charge of the case, said in a separate phone interview that Cabataña, who was separated from the child’s father, would be charged with parricide on January 3,  the first working day this year, before the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor’s Office.

Ynot said their investigation showed that the mother apparently  got irked when her son, who was having a fever, refused to take the medicine that she was giving him in the afternoon of Sunday, December 30.

It was then that the mother allegedly began hitting her child who, due to the beating, had fallen into the lower side of their house.

It was not known when on Sunday the child exactly died but it was not until the following day, at 4 p.m. of December 31, when the lifeless child was brought by his mother to North Funeral Homes, a funeral parlor in the town proper, for embalming.

The embalmer, upon seeing the bruised body of the boy, however suspected foul play in the death of the child, refused to embalm his body, and instead called the police.

The police then took custody of the child’s remains and ordered it kept at the funeral home pending approval fo their request for an autopsy. 

According to Ynot, they would need the consent of the child’s father before an autopsy can be conducted.

Initially, police suspected that the child succumbed to severe beating because of the bruises found all over his body,  according to Ynot. /elb