Hunt on for Angeles girl's kidnapper

ANGELES CITY, Philippines  – Policemen are hunting down a suspect in the kidnapping of a three-year-old girl from her home in Barangay Lourdes Northwest here before dawn last Monday.

The girl was released later that same day after her parents haggled with the suspect in reducing the ransom from P400,000 to P30,000.

In a report, Superintendent Roger Tomen, of the Angeles City police, said the girl’s parents reported to authorities that their daughter went missing at around 5:50 a.m. last Monday.

According to the couple, they left their daughter at home with her six-year-old brother so they could play at Casino Filipino in Barangay Balibago here. The children were left in the custody of the father’s brother.

The couple said they saw their two kids asleep in their beds when they went home at around 4 a.m. Monday. They again left to go to the market to attend to their chicken business.

While at the market, police said the couple received a text message in Kapampangan that their daughter was being held with a warning of retaliation if the case was reported to the police.

Another text message from the suspect demanded P400,000 ransom to be paid at 10 p.m. that day.

By 8 p.m., the suspect was persuaded by the girl’s parents, who by this time were assisted by agents of the Police Anti-Crime Emergency Response (PACER), to reduce the ransom to P30,000.

A relative of the couple volunteered to deliver the cash at a designated site along Ventura Street in Barangay Ninoy Aquino at around midnight.

Tomen said the suspect was able to flee with the cash after the relative failed to immediately alert policemen who positioned themselves in a nearby block.

The suspect initially misled the parents by saying that their daughter was abandoned in Barangay Mining. They later sent a text message that the girl was in Barangay Pandan where she was eventually found shaken but unharmed.

Tomen said probers now have a clue who the suspect is, but he declined to give details.         – With Ric Sapnu