Case of 2 ‘kidnapped’ kids puzzles cops

Two young children who went missing under mysterious circumstances for eight days have returned to their family in Cainta town in Rizal, police said on Monday.

Senior Superintendent Manuel Prieto, Rizal police director, said in a phone interview that the 6-year-old girl and her 4-year-old brother were brought back to their parents by a neighbor who found them.

But the children remained under the close watch of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). This was after the two were allegedly abducted on Oct. 9 by an unknown group of people who some residents thought were church workers conducting a feeding program in their poor community in Barangay San Juan in Cainta.

At around 7 a.m. on Monday, the children were found in the company of an unidentified man on a street near Ortigas Road in Taytay town, also in Rizal, by an elderly woman who happened to be the siblings’ neighbor in San Juan.

“The woman approached the man and told him that she knew the two kids. After doing so, she said the man just left the kids to her,” Prieto said.

The elderly woman decided to bring the children back to their parents on the same day, the officer said.

No sign of abuse

Prieto said the children showed no physical signs of abuse. The DSWD, however, continued to conduct an interview in the hope of tracing their purported abductors.

“It’s still hard to tell right now if it was kidnapping. The children come from a poor family. Their parents are jobless, so there was no demand for a ransom,” Prieto said.

Supt. Noel Ponollera, Cainta police chief, by phone also said investigators had yet to establish a motive for the abduction, but considered it a case of kidnapping with serious illegal detention.

He said the parents only sought help from police on Oct. 14 or five days after the children went missing.

“The parents probably thought their kids were just somewhere in the area so they tried looking for them themselves at first,” Ponollera said.

He said police were investigating a statement from another youngster who said he saw the two children being “forcibly taken on a van” by a group of people wearing face masks.

Ponollera said the children in the community first thought that the people on the van were the church workers who usually conducted feeding programs in their area.