Street-smart girl, 9, puts one over her kidnappers

TARLAC CITY - It pays to be street-smart. By acting out what she saw in movies, this nine-year-old girl put one over her kidnappers.

As the Grade 3 pupil recounted to Mayor Gelacio Manalang, she was snatched in front of a bank in Barangay Sto. Cristo last Jan. 4. That day, too, two other children - a 10-year-old female student and a 13-year-old high school freshman - were seized separately in the city.

All three underwent the same ordeal: their kidnappers made them sniff a piece of cloth laced with a substance that sent them to sleep. Except for the nine-year-old kid.

"Napapanood ko kasi sa mga pelikula na pag may pinaamoy sa iyo, makakatulog ka, kaya nag-acting na lang po ako (I see in movies that when strangers make you smell something, you fall asleep, so I just acted as if I went to sleep)," she recalled.

They were whisked off to a maroon van where she saw 15 other children as young as three years old, wearing nursery and day care uniforms.

While on their way to Manila, the girl said their kidnappers snatched another girl - a high school student about 15 years old - in San Fernando, Pampanga.

Upon reaching Balintawak, she said they were kept in an abandoned warehouse, a few meters away from a police outpost. Inside the bodega, she saw 50 other children guarded by men armed with firearms and knives.

While their guards were taking a rest, she and the two other kids snatched in this city managed to escape. They ran and walked for four hours until they bumped into a female bystander. They narrated their ordeal, and the woman gave them food and brought them to ABS-CBN's Bantay Bata.

It was at the TV station where their parents and social workers here fetched them.

Alarmed over the incident, Manalang ordered the police, barangay officials and volunteers of the civilian group Bantay Bayan to secure schools. He also called on parents of other missing children to coordinate with authorities.

Manalang suspects that the child-snatching syndicate has been operating here for sometime now. Thanks to the street-smart girl, everyone is now on guard.