Homecoming a mistake for QC’s most wanted

The Quezon City Police District (QCPD) on Monday arrested the city’s most wanted crime suspect, a 24-year-old man who has been on the run since allegedly raping a minor in 2014.

Ian Bayani is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, his neighbor in Novaliches, in the wee hours of July 3, 2014. Police said he forced his way into the victim’s house by tearing down the backdoor.

He then punched her in the stomach and dragged her to another room to rape her, according to the complaint. The assault happened while the victim’s mother was not home and her younger sister was asleep in the next room.

An arrest warrant for Bayani was issued by Judge Cecilyn Burgos-Villavert of Quezon City Regional Trial Court-Branch 89 on May 12, 2016. No bail was recommended.

Back in the hood

Bayani was seen at his old home in Barangay Kaligayahan in November last year after hiding in Laguna province, the QCPD director, Chief Supt. Guillermo Eleazar, said.

The rape victim and her family have since left the area. After a surveillance operation, members of the QCPD Special Operations Unit arrested Bayani in his house around 11:15 a.m. on Monday.

Presenting Bayani to reporters on Tuesday, Eleazar said the alleged rapist was also a suspected drug user. “The way he committed the crime against a minor and the information that he was involved in illegal drugs became the basis for (tagging) him as the (QCPD’s) most wanted person,” the official added.

Since the beginning of the month, the Quezon City police have served arrest warrants on 14 persons, six of them in areas covered by the Novaliches police station, for various crimes like murder, frustrated murder, rape, estafa and robbery, among others.