Couple charged for kidnapping

Kidnapping charges have been filed before the Regional Trial Court yesterday against a man and a woman accused of taking the one-month-old child of their neighbor in barangay Apas without her permission.

Relly Arellano, 29, of San Miguel, Iloilo City and his common-law wife Miraflor Lerio, 25, of barangay Colon, Maasin, Saranggani Province, are now detained at the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center after they were arrested on aboard an inter-island vessel bound for Iloilo City last September 10.

They allegedly took the child of their neighbor 29-year-old Aileen Anniban and were later arrested by the police on aboard M/V Asia-Philippines bound for Iloilo. Anniban said Lerio befriended her last August 15 while she and Arellano were staying at the house of her neighbor Virginia Baldoza.

She said that whenever Lerio visited her house she would cuddle the child in her arms.

Lerio went to Anniban's house at 5:30 a.m. of September 10 and asked to bring the child out of the house but Anniban did not allow her to do so because the child's clothes had not yet been changed yet.

Anniban also noticed that Lerio seemed already uneasy as she left, she later came back at 10 a.m. and asked to hold her son again. While Anniban was busy attending to her three other children Lerio went to the kitchen with her son but never returned.

Anniban searched everywhere but could not find her, when she later called Lerio's cellular phone Lerio told her her child was fine.

Anniban and her relatives quickly went to the South Bus Terminal at Natalio Bacalso Avenue and informed the policemen manning the terminal about the kidnapping of her child.

From there, Anniban also proceeded to the port area and sought the help of the Maritime policemen to look for her child.

The police eventually found them on the vessel. Earlier, Lerio told her relatives she already had a son by Arellano, they also went as far as to buy new clothes for the child. - Rene U. Borromeo