‘Pedicab’ driver rapes, then kills 6-year-old girl

MANILA -- Police have arrested a 22-year-old ‘pedicab’ driver for raping and killing a six-year-old girl in the central Philippine city of Victorias.

The driver put the dead body in a garbage bag and hid it under his bed.

Superintendent Alexander Muñoz, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Victorias, identified the suspect as ‘RGO’, a drug addict.

The victim’s sister reportedly identified the pair of slippers that Kim Marie Jane Cañete was wearing when she failed to come home for supper on Saturday night. The victim was last seen playing on a quiet road near the suspect’s house — a shanty in Barangay 16A, New Barrio.

Muñoz said the suspect must have been planning to dispose of the body in a nearby river, as he had temporarily kept it under his wooden bed. He added that initial investigations showed that the girl had died of asphyxiation, as the suspect must have smothered her to death with a pillow.