Suspect in campus beauty queen’s slay freed

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—A case of mistaken identity has led a prosecutor to order the release of a suspect in the March 2 killing of a campus beauty queen in her dormitory in Angeles City, a police official said on Sunday.

Rolando Estrada was ordered freed by Prosecutor Mark Oliver Sison after a 12-year-old witness corrected the information he first gave the police and pointed to a second suspect, Vladimir Dianzon, as the suspected killer of Danielle Louise Conde, 17, a native of Capas, Tarlac.

Conde, an engineering student and beauty queen at Holy Angel University here, was stabbed and killed by a lone assailant in her room at Baculi Apartments in Barangay (village) Lourdes.

Dianzon, of Barangay Telabastagan in this city, had been detained since Saturday at the police’s investigation and detection management branch after the prosecutor found probable cause to charge him with robbery with homicide.

Senior Superintendent Jose Hidalgo Jr., Angeles police chief, declined to say how investigators found Dianzon or cite the evidence against him, but said the “technical capability” of the police led them to him.

Estrada, 32, went to the police on Friday to clear his name after a composite sketch of the suspect matched his features.

Hidalgo said policemen recovered the bicycle that Conde’s killer supposedly used to flee from the crime scene. Left with bloodstains, it was abandoned at a transport terminal in Barangay Capaya in Angeles. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon