THE suspect in the murder a four-year-old girl in Kibungan, Benguet late last year was arrested for another crime in La Trinidad, a police official said.
Chief Superintendent Eugene Martin, director of the Cordillera Police Regional Office (PRO), identified the suspect as Forton Dumapi Gapad, 31, a gardener from Kibungan.
Gapad, who was arrested for a kidnapping charge, was arrested in his hideout located at IB-126 Betag, La Trinidad, Benguet last Thursday. Judge Francis Buliyat of La Trinidad's Regional Trial Court (RTC) issued the warrant for his arrest.
"Gapad is also a suspect in the gruesome murder of Jarlene Basilio, a four-year-old girl in Lubo, Kibungan, who was reported missing last October and discovered by her grandfather in a shallow grave below their residence last February 24," Martin said.
The girl was already in an advanced state of decomposition.
Although police investigators could not positively confirm if she was sexually abused before she was killed, "indications suggest she was raped" since her pants and underwear were not on when her remains were exhumed.
Superintendent Nerino Blaze Daciego, chief medico-legal officer of the PNP Crime Laboratory regional office, who led the exhumation operation last February 28, revealed that the girl was 85 to 90 percent "skeletonized" when dug up, "and from all indications, it could be said she died a violent death."
"Although it is not conclusive, it is suggested (by the way we found her) she may have been sexually abused because her pants and underwear were not on her her when her remains were dug up," Daciego stressed. (ENO)
