Thursday, March 18, 2004
Israeli’s girl ‘strangled’
A MURDER charge was filed yesterday against an Israeli after the autopsy on his online chatmate, who met him in a downtown pension house, showed that she died of asphyxia by strangulation last Tuesday.
Assistant City Prosecutor William Canta, who is handling the case, gave Yakov (not Yarkovi as earlier reported) Yarkoni seven days to answer the complaint filed by the Cebu City Police Office Homicide Section.
Yarkoni, 37, who hails from the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv, met with the parents of Raquel Macasero, 23, at the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor and denied having had a hand in her death.
Swear
“I swear to God, I didn’t do anything to her. She didn’t even enter my room. She was not that kind of girl. I liked her very much,” a tearful Yarkoni said.
Yarkoni is now detained at the Cebu City Police Office stockade.
Homicide Investigator SPO2 Jay Yballe said they picked up Yarkoni at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport around 5 p.m. Tuesday. He was about to board a Cebu Pacific flight.
Although he wasn’t caught in the act of killing the woman, the police considered his act of immediately checking out of the pension house and leaving for the airport as an attempt to flee.
Yarkoni and Macasero, who hailed from Bolinawan, Carcar, Cebu, met through the Internet via chatting.
In her affidavit, Mary Ann Pareja, McSherry Pension’s front desk staff, said Macasero went to McSherry around 8 a.m. and asked to be allowed to see Yarkoni.
In compliance with regulations, Pareja phoned Yarkoni for his consent and, after being told that the visitor was expected, allowed Macasero to proceed to room 408 where Yarkoni was billeted.
She said that around 11:45 a.m., another guest of the pension house informed her that a woman, who she later knew was Macasero, was lying unconscious in the hallway.
Pareja immediately called the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation, whose personnel rushed Macasero to the hospital.
Minutes after the incident, she said Yarkoni approached her desk and told her he was checking out.
She said she asked him to wait until the house manager arrived but Yarkoni, instead, uttered something in his dialect and immediately left.
Another employee, Kenneth Villacarlos, also executed an affidavit stating that he saw Yarkoni hunched over Macasero’s body, which was lying just outside Yarkoni’s room.
Villacarlos, a utility man, said he ran towards Yarkoni’s room after having heard somebody shout.
Macasero’s mother Angelina said Yakov is Macasero’s chatmate. The victim left home around 6 a.m. Tuesday to meet him in the city. Macasero was the eldest of eight children. KNR/MBG
(March 18, 2004 issue)
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