The 7-year old girl, identified only as ‘Bai’, told reporters here that a lady wearing what looked like a white hospital uniform alighted from the van and tried to grab her while she was waiting for her uncle outside Marbel Elementary School in Barangay Marbel, Matalam, around 10:30 a.m. Monday
Bai even showed bruises on her right hand which she obtained after she smashed into the school’s steel gate when she tried to free herself from the woman’s grip.
The girl was waiting for her uncle when the attempted abduction took place.
Witnesses saw a black Toyota van with plate number BMM 507 and an old model of a white pick-up car that served as back-up.
The pick-up was only identified as bearing the numbers 486, the uncle said.
Matalam police chief Insp. Jerson Birrey said that the vehicles escaped by following a road towards Barangay Salvacion, a remote village in Matalam.
The road leads to either Kidapawan City’s outskirts or to President Roxas, a hinterland town in the north.
Bai’s uncle said parents panicked when they heard the reports.
“None of the children returned to school on that day despite the urgent calls made by the school officials,” he said.
Senior Supt. Lester Camba, Cotabato provincial police director, has ordered a thorough probe on the case, the second since last week.
On March 6, the driver of a white van reportedly tried to snatch three school children at the Marciano Mancera Memorial Elementary School in Barangay Balindog here.
“We’re still looking for motives here. Why would they target kids? What’s in the kids, anyway?” Camba told radio station dxND here.
Earlier, text messages had circulated in the city saying that three vehicles (black Toyota van, white pick-up, and green van, with backup motorcycles) with kidnappers on board are plying the Cotabato-Sultan Kudarat route looking for their possible kidnap victims.
“At this time, we have yet to get information from the Land Transportation Office as to the identities of the owners of those vehicles. We’ve alerted all our units on this case,” said Camba. (MindaNews)