MANILA, Philippines—Manila policemen arrested three suspects in the early Monday gang rape of a 20-year-old student who was on her way home from watching fireworks to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
One of the officials of Barangay 72, Zone 6, who rounded up and turned over the three suspects to police custody, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, “Binaboy talaga nila iyong babae (They really debased the woman).” The barangay (village) watchmen had allegedly stumbled onto the group of six men in the act of raping the victim, a resident of the barangay, at a passenger jeepney parking area along Masinop Street in Tondo, Manila.
Operatives of the Manila Police District Women’s and Children’s Protection Desk (MPD-WCPD) identified the arrested suspects as: Reynaldo Rivera, 18, and Kyle John Fernandez, 20, both of CP Garcia Street, Tondo, as well as their 17-year-old alleged cohort, of Banaba Street, Tondo, whose name was withheld because of his minor age.
Three others, including a 17-year-old boy, are the subject of a police hunt. Two of the suspects were identified as Mark Joseph Barrios, who goes by the alias McCoy, and Raymond de los Santos, who is also known as Bilog.
Reports from the MPD-WCPD revealed that the rape happened around 1 a.m. at a vacant lot, converted into a PUJ [public utility jeepney] parking area.
Barangay tanod (village watchman) Jerry Co, a member of the arresting team, told the Inquirer that he and other watchmen were conducting routine patrol along Cristobal Street when they met a boy running along the street.
When the boy saw them, he told them, “Something’s happening there,” indicating the unlit PUJ parking area along Masinop Street, which runs perpendicular to Cristobal Street.
“We ran towards the jeepney parking lot and saw them. They were concealed behind one of the parked passenger jeepneys and we saw the woman sobbing and kneeling on the ground. She was wearing nothing beneath the waist and two of the suspects were raping her,” Co recalled.
The barangay watchmen cried out, which alarmed the suspects, four of whom were able to run away. The watchmen caught up with two of them: Rivera and a minor while Fernandez was arrested when they and MPD-WCPD personnel found him at his house.
“Talagang binaboy nila iyong biktima (They really degraded her),” Co angrily told the Inquirer, recalling how he and his companions saw one of the suspects sodomizing her, while another suspect forced her into oral sex. “The suspects are 17 to 20 years old. Most of them are pedicab drivers or out-of-school youth who we usually see hanging out in the neighborhood,” he pointed out.
The victim’s 39-year-old father told the Inquirer that the suspects were all residents of his barangay and said that he constantly saw them in his neighborhood.
He said that his daughter, at the time of the rape, had just gone to hear Mass with her friends and later on decided to watch fireworks at an amusement park in Pasay City.
“She (victim) said she was walking home when two of them (suspects) approached her and pointed fan knives at her. They dragged her to the vacant lot and raped her there,” he said.
“I cannot forgive them for this. I want all of them behind bars. They are not human,” he remarked.
The arrested 17-year-old suspect told the Inquirer that he simply acted as a lookout and at least four of his alleged cohorts had a turn with the victim. He claimed that the whole thing had been planned by McCoy, one of the two suspects who allegedly dragged the victim to the parking area where they gang-raped her.
“I never laid a hand on her. I was just watching,” he alleged.
The three suspects remained in the custody of the MPD-WCPD pending the filing of a rape charge against them before the City Prosecutor’s Office.