CABANATUAN CITY – Police are looking into reports that an unidentified man allegedly tried to snatch an eight-year-old girl inside a public school in Barangay Camp Tinio here shortly before 12 noon Thursday that went viral in social media.
Major Vladimir Dela Cruz, city police station OIC, who met with the girl's parents as well as school and village officials Friday said they were collating more CCTV
footages that would lead to the identification of the man who supposedly attempted to bring her out of the school.
"Patuloy po ang follow-up investigation lalo na ang mga kuha ng CCTV at sa mga salaysay po ng mga tao sa labas ng eskwelahan na maaaring makakilala rito," Dela
Cruz said, referring to a hooded man whom the girl identified as the one who allegedly tried to "pick" her inside a classroom at Camp Tinio Elementary School.
The man supposedly told the girl, a Grade 4 pupil, that he was her father and was fetching her for home. The girl resisted, rebutted he was not her father, prompting the man to rush out via back gate.
Jam, the girl's mother, said her daughter was visibly in "trauma" when her (mother's) sister arrived to fetch the former. The girl was alone in the classroom after her classes, with the morning shift already past and her aunt came just a bit late.
"Na-shock po sa nangyari. Na-trauma po siya. Hindi po siya makapagsalita nang maayos, hindi makakain," she said.
Dela Cruz said they are looking into all angles, including the possibility that the man only mistook the girl as the one he was tasked to fetch.
If that was the case, however, Dela Cruz believe it would be best for him to surface and tell his story since police will leave no stone unturned in pursuing the case.
The school principal Marjorrie Lazatin noted that the alleged incident went unnoticed even as classes were on going at the adjacent classroom when it supposedly happened.
The school has one security detail at the front gate and a number of village peacekeepers were deployed in front of the school. The back gate where the man reportedly entered had no detailed guard, she said, but utility personnel keep an eye into it. She vowed to make the already strict protocol even stricter. Dela Cruz said it was the first time an incident of this kind was reported in the city.
"Ang Cabanatuan City police station ay nagpapaalala po sa lahat ng mga magulang na bilinan natin ang ating mga anak na magdoble-ingat sa mga taong lumalapit at kumakausap," the cop chief said.
Dela Cruz also appealed to social media users to be careful in posting things that may result to undue panic: "Dahil ang takot at pangamba na maaaring idulot po nito ay nakakapekto po sa morale at kaisipan, hindi lamang po ng mga magulang kundi ng mga mag-aaral na nakakabasa o nakakarinig nito."
