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BY RUBY P. SILUBRICO
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Friday. September 15, 2017
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ILOILO City – The Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) ordered the city and provincial police offices of Iloilo to investigate alleged attempted abductions of young girls.
The reports must be verified, said Chief Superintendent Cesar Hawthorne Binag, regional police director.
“We don’t want to ignore the reports. The targets were allegedly mostly schoolchildren,” he said.
Binag ordered an increase in the number of policemen deployed in the vicinity of schools.
The management of Central Philippine University (CPU) based in Jaro district, meanwhile, warned its students to be wary of strangers.
They could be kidnappers, according to Prim Vergara III, CPU occupational safety and health officer and technical assistant to the university president.
“Please be aware of a new modus operandi of kidnappers outside school premises. They would lure students on the pretext that they are conducting a research and will conduct an interview inside their vehicle,” read part of CPU’s safety advisory to students that Vergara issued.
Students approached by strangers using this modus must “immediately go to the nearest guard and report it,” Vergara stressed.
On Wednesday, five men in a blue van allegedly attempted to abduct two grade school sisters in Barangay Bakhawan, Concepcion, Iloilo.
Two days before that, a father reported to the La Paz district police station here that his 15-year-old daughter managed to flee from a man who tried to drag her into a waiting sports utility vehicle.
“I have talked to my directors and I ordered them to conduct an investigation,” said Binag, referring to Senior Superintendent Henry Biñas of the Iloilo City Police Office and Senior Superintendent Marlon Tayaba of the Iloilo Police Provincial Office.
In the La Paz incident, the father said his daughter was waiting to catch a jeepney ride in front of the church just across the public plaza when a sports utility vehicle stopped in front of her.
A man got down from the vehicle, approached the girl, grabbed her by the arm then pulled her toward the vehicle, said the father.
The girl, however, resisted and kicked the man on the crotch, said the father, and this gave his daughter the chance to run away.
In the Concepcion incident, according to Chief Inspector Abner Jordan, municipal police chief, the targets were two sisters – an 11-year-old Grade 6 pupil and nine-year-old Grade 4 pupil of Bakhawan Elementary School.
Around 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday the sisters were walking home when a blue van stopped and five men inside told them, “Sakay kamo di,” the girls’ parents told the police.
“The two sisters ran as fast as they could and alerted their parents,” said Jordan.
The Concepcion police set up checkpoints after the girls’ parents reported the matter. But cops failed to catch the van.
Jordan advised parents it would be better if they fetch their children from school.
He also urged children not to talk to strangers.
“It’s also better for the children to walk in groups,” Jordan added./PN
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