Superintendent Sotero Ramos Jr., Marikina police chief, said the statement of Erica Lacaba would bolster the murder charges against her father Enrico Lacaba and co-accused Cayetano Navidad, Eric Garcia and Jerry Moreno.
According to Ramos, city prosecutor Linda Adame-Conos has accepted the young Lacaba’s statement as evidence and filed the murder charges before the Marikina City Regional Trial Court.
"We were looking for the least guilty among the suspects to be converted as state witness. But with the girl’s testimony, we are shutting the door for such," Ramos said in an interview.
The girl’s statement was taken in the presence of her grandfather, Alfonso Lacaba, witness Lorna Aquista and Police Officer 2 Saniata Rona Maglaque, of the local police’s women’s desk.
Enrico and Suelo lived together for eight years and Erica was their first child. The couple has two other children.
Lacaba, Navidad and Garcia were arrested days after the murder while Moreno remains at large. The three admitted killing Suelo several days before Christmas.
According to the girl, it was her godfather, Moreno who first stabbed Suelo at the height of a drinking spree in the compound. She said her father held her mother by the arms while Moreno stabbed her in the chest.
The last time she saw her mother alive, Suelo was bleeding due to a stab wound. It was at that point that her father ordered her to go inside their shanty.
However, the children still did not realize that their mother was already dead. Lacaba later told the police that he told the children that their mother had gone away to work as a maid when they asked about her whereabouts.
Suelo was buried by the suspects in a shallow grave inside the Pedraza compound — of which Lacaba is a caretaker — located at the corner of Santan and Magnolia streets, La Colina Subdivision in Barangay Fortune.
Her body was dug up by crime scene investigators last week. Lacaba and his cohorts were arrested shortly after Navidad had made a drunken boast about killing Suelo and was overheard by a neighbor who then went to the police. Navidad allegedly said they killed Suelo because she was a nagger.