Japanese student cries rape; Baguio suspect found dead
BAGUIO CITY– Hours after a Japanese student reported being raped in a Baguio motel, policemen found her alleged rapist hanging from a shower pipe in the motel an apparent suicide, the Cordillera police said on Monday.
The 21-year-old student fled from a room in the Nova Lodge before Sunday noontime and telephoned friends about the sexual abused supposedly committed by 26-year-old taxi driver Ferdinand Pasuli Jr.
When police were called in, a team deployed to the motel at 3:50 p.m. found Pasuli hanging from a shower pipe.
The taxi driver had been strangled with two black shoe laces looped around his neck, police said.
Investigators found the taxi cab (bearing plate nos. AYR 980) parked in the motel garage.
The student claimed that she and a Japanese man, Yusuke Tanabe, had asked Pasuli to drive them to their respective homes. Tanabe was brought to Gibraltar village, but the student said the driver refused to bring her home and brought her instead to the motel, where she was supposedly assaulted.
The student said the driver allowed her to leave the room at 11:30 a.m., enabling her to contact her friends.
SFM/rga
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