Bella Ruby pleads innocent to kidnapping raps

CEBU CITY (Updated 12:23 p.m.) -- A Cebuana who was accused along with her British boyfriend in the kidnapping and killing of a six-year-old girl in Naga City, Cebu pleaded innocent to the charge.

During her arraignment Monday at the Regional Trial Court (RTC) branch 6 presided by Judge Ester Veloso, Bella Ruby Santos entered not guilty plea to kidnapping with homicide charge filed against her and British boyfriend Ian Charles Griffiths.

Santos went into hiding after Veloso issued last July an arrest warrant against her and her boyfriend for the death of Ellah Joy Pique.

Operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation-Central Visayas arrested Santos inside the SM Mega Mall in Ortigas on October 7, 2011.

Pique was last seen leaving school in Calajoan, Minglanilla, Cebu, last February 8. Her lifeless body was found the next day at the bottom of a cliff near Sayaw Beach in Barili town, more than 40 kilometers away from home.

Police theorized that Santos and Griffiths took the girl to use her in an online sex operation.

Earlier, the Office of the Naga City Prosecutor dismissed the child pornography charge lodged against Santos for lack of evidence.

Naga City Prosecutor Napoleon Alburo said the complaint the police filed wouldn’t survive trial.

The child pornography case was an offshoot of the raid the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) conducted on Santos’s home in Naga at the height of the agency’s investigation on the abduction and killing of Pique.

Santos is now detained at the City of Naga jail while the kidnapping with homicide case against her and British boyfriend is being tried. (Sunnex)