The Antipolo police said on Wednesday it had followed the standard procedure when the body of a Swiss student was found with a gunshot wound along the road in the city three months ago.
The body, which was kept in a city morgue since September 22 last year, was only identified on Monday as Alex Reich, the subject of a search involving local authorities, Zurich police and the Interpol.
“It is not true that we did not report the incident to the higher authorities. On the day itself, we faxed the report to the NCRPO [National Capital Regional Police Office] and alerted several embassies in Manila,” said Senior Inspector Marlon Manalo, head of the investigation unit of the Antipolo police.
He said the investigators even went to universities in Rizal province to check if a foreign student was reported missing.
There were no identification documents on Reich’s body when it was found by bystanders on a vacant lot in Barangay (village) San Roque around 4:45 a.m. a few hours after he left his condominium in Quezon City.
The Antipolo police called the Quezon City police after one of its investigators chanced upon a website containing information about the missing student on January 2.
Chief Inspector Rodel Marcelo of the Quezon City Police District said that since the body was found in Antipolo, the local police had jurisdiction over the case.
“But we will also conduct our own investigation on the disappearance, which happened in Quezon City, in coordination with the Antipolo police, he said.—With Nancy C. Carvajal