Japanese-Filipino couple charged for death of their 51-day-old son

CEBU CITY — The city prosecutor’s office has filed parricide charges against a Japanese-Filipino couple for the death of their 51-day-old son.

Because the offense is non-bailable, Daisuke and Loreta Kishi were again taken into police custody last Friday on the strength of a warrant issued by Regional Trial Court Judge Isaias Dicdican.

Judge Ramon Codilla Jr. earlier ordered the couple released, ruling that their first arrest last May 9 was illegal.

The Kishis are under the custody of the city police. They were supposed to be remanded to the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center but Regional Trial Court Judge Pampio Abarintos granted their motion the other day to remain at the police detention cell at Camp Sotero Cabahug.

The Kishis, Abarintos said, are "at the moment in (a) period of bereavement having just lost their first-born son and must be together during this very difficult time."

Abarintos also said Loreta may be in a delicate condition because she fainted on her way to the Palace of Justice the other day and sprained her left ankle.

Daisuke cannot speak Cebuano and understands very little English, the judge added.

Assistant city prosecutor Fernando Gubalane said in a resolution approved by chief prosecutor Jose Pedrosa, that there was probable cause to indict the couple for parricide.

While nobody saw the couple allegedly inflicting injuries on their child, Gubalane said they were the only ones "who had custody and care of him, during his birth and immediately before his death."

"The injuries were not controverted nor disowned by the respondents, although they claimed not (having inflicted) physical harm to the child," he said.

The controversy started when the couple brought their child to a private hospital last week after Loreta discovered that he was no longer moving after she fed him. The baby did not reach the hospital alive.

Pediatrician Eduena Redulla took an X-ray of the child after suspecting the real cause of his death.

The doctor found out that the boy had a skull fracture, a bruise on the left cheek, laceration on the nose and deformity on the right lower leg.

Police medico-legal officer Nestor Sator, who autopsied the child’s body last Thursday, came out with similar findings, adding that the contusions and fractures were possibly due to contact with hard objects.

Sator’s findings, however, negated the postmortem findings of medico-legal officer Jesus Cerna.

In an affidavit, Cerna said the Kishi couple claimed that their son had a fever a few days before he died.

Cerna said he signed the death certificate "in good faith," stating that the child died of cardio-pulmonary arrest secondary to broncho pneumonia.

But Sator’s autopsy report prevailed over Cerna’s findings.

Gubalane said the couple "misled" Cerna into stating that their child died of complications from broncho pneumonia, and not because of physical injuries.

Denying the accusations against them, Loreta earlier said their son accidentally fell when her husband was bathing him, his face hitting the edge of the bathtub. She said she was sick at the time so it was Daisuke who bathed their son.

Loreta said the fracture on the baby’s leg might have been caused by her massages. Her child, she said, was bowlegged. — Freeman News Service