Woman raped, left for dead by husband’s childhood pal

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga — Not even a family friend can be trusted.

This was a sad lesson for 24-year-old Jesel Columbres, who was raped, beaten with a steel pipe and left for dead in an isolated section of the anti-lahar megadike here last Saturday.

Columbres, a resident of Barangay San Isidro here, survived and pinpointed her husband’s childhood friend and her son’s ninong (baptismal godfather), a certain Ferdinand Serrano Pineda, 27, as her attacker.

Investigation showed that Pineda, who was driving a Mitsubishi Canter delivery van, fetched Columbres after her work at the Cosmos softdrinks factory along MacArthur Highway here.

However, instead of bringing Columbres home, Pineda allegedly brought her to an isolated portion of the megadike in Barangay Del Rosario, and raped her.

Columbres told investigators, led by SPO1 Rufino Macapagal, that the suspect molested her even after she reminded him that he was a close family friend and that she was in her menstrual period.

After raping her, Pineda allegedly grabbed a steel pipe and beat her head and other parts of the body. Apparently to make sure that she was dead for good, he allegedly held her nostrils for a while.

Despite the pain she was suffering, Columbres said she managed to pretend to be lifeless until Pineda abandoned her at the megadike.

A truck driver, a certain Benedicto Forfil of Meycauayan, Bulacan, happened to pass by the area and saw Columbres — half-naked, badly bruised and bleeding — crawling out of the megadike.

Forfil rushed her to the Jose Lingad Memorial Hospital here where she later recounted her ordeal to police probers.

Pineda remains at large but the police are filing rape with frustrated murder charges against him today.