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Saturday, May 10, 2003
Japanese and wife held for dead baby
By Mia E. Abellana
CEBU -- A Japanese national and his Filipino wife were arrested and detained by operatives of the PNP Homicide Section Friday after their month-old baby died.
Inconsolable after being told they might have to spend a few weeks in jail, the couple signed a waiver of detention to prevent the filing of a parricide case against them.
Daisuke Kinshi, 24, and his wife Loreta Gamali-Kinshi, 26, brought 51-day-old Diether Lorence to the Cebu Doctors’ Hospital in Cebu City Wednesday morning after they noticed something wrong with him.
Loreta told pediatrician Dr. Nora Redulla that Diether had been crying the night before and when she put him to sleep, she made him sleep face down.
When she woke up the next day, the baby appeared dead.
But when Redulla examined the body, she noticed a bruise on Diether’s cheek, lacerations on the nose and soft palate and the right leg looked deformed.
When she asked Loreta about these, she said the bruise was Daisuke’s fault because he dropped the baby while he was bathing him and his cheek hit the edge of the bathtub.
She also claimed that the laceration on his nose was because they have been wiping it due to colds.
Redulla was not satisfied with the explanation and ordered an X-ray.
It revealed that the skull was fractured, prompting her to instruct the staff at the emergency room to contact the police and declare that a full autopsy was mandatory.
She added that the child should not be released to the parents until the autopsy was conducted.
She found out that the parents did not have the child autopsied and planned to have his body cremated.
Alarmed, she immediately reported this to the police, who then proceeded to the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes on Junquera St. to talk to Diether’s parents.
Chief investigator Mario Monilar said they had enough basis to file parricide charges against Daisuke and Loreta.
They will use the autopsy report and Redulla’s statements as evidence.
While the couple refused to comment when interviewed by reporters, their lawyer Vicente Fernandez said he was considering taking legal actions against the police as they had no basis to hold his clients.
Fernandez said Dr. Redulla did not point to his clients as the culprits and that nobody caught his clients in the act of maltreating the infant.
Regional Crime Laboratory medico-legal officer Nestor Sator, who conducted the autopsy last Thursday, said the child died of cardiac arrest, but what caused his heart to stop beating could not be ascertained until the lung tissue of the baby is examined.
He said the pathological examination in Camp Crame will determine the extent of the injuries in the baby’s head, if there was suffocation, and whether the child died of broncho-pneumonia, as claimed by another government doctor.
If the parricide case was filed Friday, the couple would have to stay inside the Bagong Buhay Rehabiliation Center until the case is resolved, since parricide is a heinous crime and is non-bailable.
With the 10-day waiver, they will have to be detained at the homicide office, until the city prosecutor’s office can resolve the issue.
The City Prosecutor’s Office was bent on filing the parricide case against the couple, but Fernandez was able to file the waiver.
Sator concurred with Redulla’s findings, saying he found two fractures in both sides of Diether’s skull, a contusion in his cheek, a lacerated wound in his nose, and a fracture in his right leg.
He said the fractures in Diether’s skull could have contributed to the cardiac arrest.
He said the fractures could have been caused by hard objects, including the floor.
He noted that the skull fractures were recent, as there were hints of swelling.
But the fracture on the right leg was not new, which is explained by the callus formation around the leg.
Loreta earlier explained they have been massaging it because he was bow-legged.
As to laceration on the baby’s soft palate, this was reportedly caused by Daisuke, who was cleaning the baby’s tongue, and accidentally hit it with his fingernails.
Redulla told investigators that she had administered Diether’s Hepatitis-B immunization last March 24 and that she told Loreta to bring him back a month after for the second shot.
However, they did not bring him back for the second shot.
The next time she saw Diether was when she was called to the Cebu Doctor’s Hospital emergency room Wednesday morning when the child was dead.
Redulla told police that she found Loreta’s statements inconsistent with the physical findings on Diether, which reveals that “the child was killed in a violent manner.” With Grecar A. Nilles/Sun.Star Cebu
(May 10, 2003 issue)
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