CEBU CITY, Philippines — A 10-year-old girl from Barangay Maghaway, Talisay City, who had been missing for three days, was found dead in a cave in Sitio Napo, Barangay Tapul in Talisay City on Sunday, January 9, 2022.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Randy Caballes, chief of the Talisay City Police Station, said that they were at Sitio Napo, Barangay Tapul, on Sunday night to look for possible witnesses that might have seen the girl before she went missing.
Caballes said that the minor was a Grade 4 student and a resident of the barangay.
“Naa tas brgy karon ato gipatawag ang mga naa sa area possible nga eyewitness, gipangstorya nato para macheck kung naa bay nakakita sa panghitabo,” Caballes said.
(We are in the barangay now and we are talking to the residents in the area who could be possible eyewitnesses to the crime.)
Caballes said that the family went to their station on January 6 to inform them that their daughter was nowhere to be found after she excused herself on Wednesday, January 5, from her sibling and cousin while taking a dip at the river in their area.
He said that the victim told her brother and cousin that she would go to her mother who was around 200 meters away from where they were, who was washing clothes at that time.
Later, the victim’s brother and cousin went to where the mother was and found out that the victim was still not there.
They started looking for her and since they did not find her until the next day, January 6, they reported her missing at the police station.
Around 10:00 a.m. on January 9, Talisay police received a call from a concerned citizen that a body of a dead girl was found hidden in a cave beside a river covered with rocks.
The family of the girl positively identified her as their missing relative.
Cerila, 47, the mother of the girl in an interview, said that the victim was the youngest of her five children.
Cerila said that according to their neighbors, there were at least four men, whom they suspected to be the culprits as they were seen looking for something or someone in the same river that the victim was last seen.
Cerila said that they believed that the victim was raped.
“Naa man syay sanina… Gi rape kuno. Ingun ako bana gi rape kuno kay siya man nag tan-aw,” Cerila said.
(She has her clothes on…My husband told me that the way she looked at it she was raped.)
However, Caballes, for his part, said that they had yet to confirm this pending the medical result.
Cerila, for her part, cries for justice and appealed to the police to solve this incident and find a way to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators.
/dbs