An 8-year-old girl has been rescued in the Philippines after being kidnapped and carried down the street, stuffed in a suitcase.
The girl was returning home around noon on Thursday after buying a soda at her aunt’s grocery store on Cebu island when she was kidnapped and put into the black briefcase, police told Sunstar.com.
Her mother, Tyree Lanny Rendal, raised the alarm hours later when she came home and couldn’t find her daughter, the news outlet said.
She then checked her building’s security video and saw the hooded man taking the luggage away, the outlet said.
After an intense and frantic search, police finally found the girl at a boarding house less than a kilometer from her home in Bakilid district of Mandaue City, the Manilla Bulletin reported.
Surprisingly, she was largely unharmed, except for minor scratches on her hands, feet, and mouth from allegedly being tied up with duct tape.
Police arrested Godiflor Rama, 32, who worked for more than a year as a guard at the apartment where the girl and her family lived.
- Godiflor Rama was arrested at a boarding house less than half a mile from the scene of the kidnapping.
Rama reportedly admitted to the kidnapping but tried to excuse his actions by saying he did it to teach the child’s grandparents a lesson after a quarrel.
“I hope the family can forgive me for what I did,” the suspect told local reporters, according to the Daily Mail, which identified the girl as Jin Nichole You.
“I only did it because they accused me of stealing their things, like their bags and hangers.”
Rama said he did not close the suitcase all the way so the girl could breathe inside – and denied sexually assaulting her while she was his captive.
“I admit that the girl is attractive, but that doesn’t mean I like her. I did not rape her,” he told the media.
“I fed her and let her play games,” he reportedly said, saying he planned to return the child to her family after 6 hours.
The 8-year-old kidnapping survivor has since been reunited with her mother, who thanked police for quickly rescuing her daughter from the clutches of her kidnapper.
“I couldn’t imagine this kind of thing happening to us,” the woman said of the heartbreaking ordeal.
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