Baby taken by woman for milk ad found in Camarines Sur
MANILA, Philippines—A tip from a retired colleague provided policemen with the lead they needed to recover a three-month-old baby who was taken by a woman from her mother in Mandaluyong City last Saturday.
Liezel Tugade Diamon was reunited with her daughter, Henzel May Joy, Wednesday morning at the Lagonoy police municipal station in Camarines Sur province.
“Diamon cried for joy when she saw her daughter,” Senior Insp. Melanie Martirez, head of the Mandaluyong City police Women and Children’s Protection Desk, said in a text message to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
She was among the policemen who accompanied the mother to Camarines Sur on Tuesday night.
The team was expected to be back in Manila at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, along with the kidnapping suspect, 26-year-old Lovelyn Casipe, who will be charged in the Mandaluyong City Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday (July 11).
Also making the trip is Casipe’s live-in partner Rex Transona who will undergo an investigation to determine his possible involvement in the case, according to Senior Supt. Florendo Quibuyen, Mandaluyong police chief.
Quibuyen added that the team went to Lagonoy based on a tip from a retired policeman, Senior Insp. Teddy Dominguez, a resident of Barangay Mancogon in Lagonoy, where the kidnapping suspect lived with Transona.
Dominguez earlier called up the Mandaluyong police when he spotted the suspect whom he recognized after he saw her picture flashed on television.
He told the police that when he asked her about the baby, she said that it was hers.
Quibuyen said Dominguez also asked her if she was the woman who was reported in the news to have kidnapped a baby but she denied the allegation.
He added that after talking to the former policeman, he immediately contacted Naga City’s police director, Supt. Nilo Berdin, who confirmed that there was indeed a Barangay Mancogon in Lagonoy.
Berdin also promised to send a police team to the area to verify the information about the suspect.
On Tuesday morning, Quibuyen said he also contacted Senior Supt. Ramiro Bausa, Camarines Sur police director, who had already ordered the head of the Lagonoy police station, Senior Insp. Van Layosa, to send a team to the address provided by Dominguez.
With the help of Dominguez who lent them a boat just to get to the suspect’s house, members of the Lagonoy police women and child welfare desk found the baby.
Layosa said the suspect did not resist arrest. He added that an investigation showed that she arrived in the municipality on Monday and had introduced the baby to Transona as their child.
Quibuyen, meanwhile, added that the suspect and Transona were just about to leave the house when the police team arrived.
When confronted by the police, the suspect vehemently denied she kidnapped the child. At first, she told them that it was her baby although she changed her story later on and insisted that the mother, whom she described as a friend, had agreed to lend her the child.
At press time, Quibuyen said it was still unclear why the suspect took the child.
Diamon reported her baby’s disappearance to the Mandaluyong police on Saturday, hours after the suspect failed to return the child as she had promised.
According to Diamon, she only recently met the suspect who convinced her to let her baby appear in a milk commercial.
On Saturday, the suspect showed up at Diamon’s house in Barangay Addition Hills, Mandaluyong City, and told her that she needed to borrow the baby for the audition which was to be held that day. With a report from Mar S. Arguelles, Inquirer Southern Luzon)
