False hostage alarm leads cops to abandoned child in Pasig

(Updated 9:11 p.m.) A hostage-taking report on Friday, which later proved false, led cops to find a child abandoned and crying inside a condominium unit in Pasig City, a police official said. Police officers from the Pasig City Police Station 1 received a report of a supposed hostage-taking incident in the posh Valle Verde village in Pasig City at 9:30 a.m. Friday, desk officer PO3 Jose Aberia told GMANews.TV in a phone interview. The report, which came from the police emergency hotline, said a mother and her child were being held hostage inside the village by a disgruntled policeman, according to Aberia.
Elements of the Pasig City Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, led by Senior Inspector Roderick Tonga, rushed to the scene to verify the report, only to find an abandoned one-year-old girl inside the condominium unit where the supposed hostage-incident was taking place. “Nagdesisyon ang chief na ipa-assault para malaman kung meron hostage-taking. Napasok ang unit. Ang laman ay batang maliit, walang magulang," Tonga told reporters, who also rushed to the scene upon hearing the hostage-taking report, on Friday. (The chief decided to launch the assault to verify if there was really a hostage-taking. We broke into the unit. Only a small child was in there, with no parents.) The girl was crying when the police found her, according to a separate radio report. Tonga added that the abandoned child was turned over to the women’s desk of the Pasig City police headquarters after the police operations. An initial investigation of the incident showed that the child’s father, a former policeman, had held his common-law wife hostage last May. “Sila rin ang maglive-in partner. Kapag nag-aaway sila, nadadamay pati bata," Senior Superintendent Jesse Cardona said in an interview aired over GMA News’ “24 Oras." (They’re the same live-in partners. When they quarrel, it affects even the child.) It is up to the city prosecutor’s office to decide if it will file charges against the child’s parents, according to Cardona.—Andreo C. Calonzo/JV, GMANews.TV