Police eye 3 more ‘persons of interest’ in minor’s slay

By: Glazyl Y. Masculino

BACOLOD City – The Bago City Police Station in Negros Occidental has included three more persons of interest in the killing of a Grade 8 student.

Police Major John Joel Batusbatusan, city police chief, said six persons between 20 and 40 years old are being questioned after the investigator learned that only a few houses are situated at Barangay Binubuhan where the body of a 14-year-old girl was found in a sugarcane field Monday.

Batusbatusan said these persons will undergo DNA examinations and their samples will be matched with the specimen recovered from the victim’s body.

But police have yet to secure official results from the autopsy examination indicating if the victim was sexually molested or not.

Last Monday, laborers found the body of the victim, who was half-naked. She was reported missing for five days by her family last January 1 after she failed to go home when she was asked by her father to get his cellular phone from the house of a family friend in the said village.

Batusbatusan assured that they can solve the case soon. He refused to identify the six persons of interest amid the investigation.