CEBU CITY, Philippines–An 11-year-old girl stabbed her father dead Sunday night after she saw him hitting her mother on the head and cutting her leg with a hacksaw inside their house in Argao town, 58 km south of this city, the authorities said.
The 38-year-old father was found dead on a vacant grassy lot a few minutes after he ran away from his daughter who stabbed him in the chest at about 11 p.m. inside their house in Barangay Canbanua, Argao.
The police took custody of the girl who was later turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development, said Insp. Alan Batobalunos, Argao police chief.
Batobalunos said the girl didn’t know that she killed her father. “Napatay nako si Papa ma? Mapriso ko (I killed papa, ma? Would I go to jail?” Batobalunos quoted the girl as asking her mother.
But he added the girl didn’t cry but instead told the police that they would not know what would happen to her and her two sisters if their mother was killed.
Their neighbor Miguel Tapales said they heard the couple arguing past 11 p.m. on Sunday. He said he just ignored it because they thought it was just one of the couple’s usual fights.
After several minutes, Tapales said the 11-year–old girl went to their house and asked for help.
“She asked for help because she feared that her father might come back and kill them. She said she stabbed her father after she saw that her father was cutting her mother’s leg with a hacksaw,” said Tapales in Cebuano.
Her mother was later brought to Isidro Kintanar Memorial Hospital in Argao and was released on Monday morning.
Perlita Buenaflor, another neighbor said they would always hear the couple quarreling. On Friday, the husband destroyed the wall of their house in the middle of the fight.
Buenaflor said the arguments were triggered by jealousy because the victim was allegedly a womanizer.
Batobalunos and the couple’s neighbors said the victim was fired from his job as a driver of a Department of Environment and Natural Resources personnel after he had an affair with a married officemate.
He then worked at the Office of the Mayor in Argao but lost his job again when he had a fling with another officemate.
Aside from the 11-year-old girl, the couple has two other daughters–a 13-year-old Grade 6 pupil and a two-month old infant.
Poor girl
