Mandaluyong City Mayor Benjamin “Benhur” Abalos Jr. has taken temporary custody of a baby girl who was thrown out of a running taxicab in Mandaluyong City last week.
Abalos paid the baby’s hospital bill, which reached more than P50,000, and brought her home as the police investigation to identify her mother came to a dead end.
“This child is deprived of love but this time I’ll see to it that she’s being loved and taken care of while under my temporary custody. I’m now acting as her foster parent,” said Abalos in an interview. “What is important right now is that she has a home this Christmas day.”
The mayor said he is waiting for the child’s true mother to surface to determine his next move to secure a good future for the child.
Senior Superintendent Carlos de Sagun, Mandaluyong City police chief, said they were able to trace the taxi driver, Ivan Hernandez, who cooperated fully in their effort to find the child’s mother.
Hernandez claimed he picked up two women, one of whom appeared to be pale and weak and may have been the mother of the child, in Barangay Kapitolyo, in Pasig City. They asked him to take them to Barangay Plainview in Mandaluyong.
Hernandez said the baby was “left behind” in front of a house with a green gate, owned by a prominent family in the barangay.
He said he heard the other passenger telling the weak and pale woman that it was her “Kuya Jun” who retrieved the baby from the box.
De Sagun said they subjected five members of the prominent family in a confrontation with Hernandez over the weekend but the taxicab driver failed to identify any of them.
The family washed their hands of any participation in the crime and claimed they have nothing to do with the child.
De Sagun admitted their effort to unearth the identity of the child’s mother is facing a blank wall. – Non Alquitran