‘Police cross out woman suspect in Karen’s slay case

NO, she’s not involved.

A woman whom police said could be a suspect in  the murder of 17-year-old  Karen Kaye Montebon in Lapu-Lapu City, went to the police office  at dawn yesterday to clear her name.

After talking to her, Senior Supt. Armando Radoc, Lapu-Lapu City police chief, said they have no basis to implicate her in Montebon’s murder.

“Negative, sumala pa sa (according to the) witness,” Radoc said.

The woman’s former live-in partner first showed up earlier on Friday and was cleared by authorities.

The man said he and the woman broke up last September 11, four days before the death of the college student who was found strangled in her bedroom in Corinthian Subdivision.

“Natingala jud ko ngano naapil ko ani kay wa jud ko nakaila sa mga biktima hasta sa papa (I was surprised to learn why I am included when I don’t know the victim and her father),” the woman said.

She had her fingerprints taken and  underwent examination at the PNP crime lab.

She and her former live-in partner were brought by the Lapu-Lapu City police to Karen’s  residence where she was shown to some witnesses.

Younger

The witnesses said she was not the one they saw with a male on a motorcycle which parked outside the Montebon’s residence last  Tuesday , Sept. 15 between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m.

The female whom police are looking for “was slimmer and much younger” with long hair.

A  police task force was  formed to  solve the murder, which has stirred online comments of indignation and black-shirt candle vigils in her school, the University of San Carlos main campus where

Karen had just started first year as an accountancy major.

The Nationa Bureau of Invesigation (NBI) was asked by her father to conduct a separate inquiry.

Police initially said they were looking into a personal grudge as a possible motive, but still have no solid suspects.

The couple who was earlier followed turned out to be a negative lead.

Radoc said they took the woman’s fingerprints and   that she would be  cleared once other tests turn out negative.

Radoc asked the media not to disclose her identity.

He said her name cropped up in a text message received by the police the day after the murder from an unnamed informant who said the woman suddenly left her home in Looc, Lapu-Lapu City at noon of the day Montebon was killed.

Police  traced her relatives in barangay Looc  and followed her to Inabanga, Bohol province.

Consistent

Her former boyfriend showed up last Friday at the Lapu-Lapu City police precinct to clear their names.

Radoc said he called up the woman who surrendered to a police officer  assigned in the Jagna police precinct and was escorted back to Lapu-Lapu city.

Radoc said the woman will still undergo questioning at the regional office of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).