Trader puts neighbors' kids in cage

MANILA, Philippines - A hardware store owner was charged with child abuse yesterday for allegedly locking up two of her neighbors’ daughters in Caloocan City Sunday afternoon.

Lance Tan, 25, owner of Lance Construction Supply in Dagat-Dagatan, was charged before the office of prosecutor Diosdado Azarcon at around 1 p.m. yesterday. Azarcon recommended that Tan be released pending further investigation and the conduct of ocular inspection of the area where the two little girls were reportedly locked up.

“It could not yet be determined if who really put the victims in the cage, so I recommended that the accused would be released for further investigation and I set an ocular inspection of the place at 2 p.m. on July 20, to determine what really happened,” Azarcon told The STAR in a telephone interview.

Elmie Labian, 25, said at around 3 p.m. Sunday, a playmate of her five-year-old daughter told her that her child and their two-year-old friend were reportedly locked up in a steel cage beside Tan’s hardware store. She said Tan told the children they were being noisy.

“Naglalaro kaming apat sa may kalsada tapos pinuntahan kami ng babae na mahaba ang buhok at ipinasok kami doon sa loob ng kulungan (We were playing on the street when a woman with long hair approached us and forced us inside the cage),” the five-year-old girl said.

The girl said two of her playmates were able to run away and only two of them were put inside the cage.

“We called on the owner of the hardware store but nobody answered us, so we decided to seek the assistance of our barangay officials,” Labian said, adding that they took photographs of the detained children before going to the barangay hall.

Labian said when they returned to the hardware store, accompanied by barangay officials, the two girls were already free. She said that it was Tan who unlocked the cage.

Barangay officials brought Tan and the complainants to the police station.

Senior Police Officer 1 Marikaye Daquioag, Caloocan City police women’s and children’s protection unit officer-in-charge, said the steel cage was not a dog house – contrary to the claims of other residents – but a secondary steel gate of Tan’s four-story building.

According to Daquioag, Tan told police that the children had gone through an opening of the steel gate, locked themselves inside while they were playing, and she had freed them.

“There were complainants so we filed the child abuse case with the prosecutor’s office and it would be up to the fiscal to decide the merit of the case,” she said.

Labian said several of her neighbors are willing to testify against Tan, who “locked our kids like dogs for almost an hour. They are just innocent children, why would she do that?”

The STAR went to Tan’s hardware store in Dagat-Dagatan at around 1:30 p.m. yesterday but it was closed. Telephone calls also went unanswered. According to Tan’s neighbors, the store is usually open on weekdays.                     – With Jerry Botial