MANILA, Philippines—A woman believed to be a foreigner was twice run over by a car and then repeatedly stabbed to death by the car’s driver, seen by witnesses as a frequent companion of the woman while she jogged in the area, on a service road on Roxas Boulevard behind the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas early Saturday.
Manila Police District homicide section head Chief Insp. Joselito de Ocampo said that the still unidentified fatality could be a Korean judging from her features.
De Ocampo described the victim as between 20 and 25 years old, five-foot-two inches tall, chinky-eyed, slim, fair-skinned, and clad in a gray jacket, black shirt worn and jogging pants.
The victim, he said, was declared dead on arrival at the Ospital ng Maynila from three stab wounds in the chest and massive head wounds apparently from being rammed and run over by the car.
Senior Police Officer 2 Charles John Duran, case investigator, said that the incident happened at around 4 a.m. Saturday along the Roxas Boulevard service road at the back of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in Malate.
Duran said that before Saturday, the woman had been jogging in the area followed by a black car driven by a foreign-looking man.
“She was frequently seen by people in the area to be running four times a week between 2 and 3 a.m. usually trailed by a car. That has been her routine for a month,” he said.
However on Saturday morning, she was seen by a witness arguing with the driver of the car, who had gotten off the vehicle. After several minutes the visibly irked driver boarded his car, revved up the engine and drove it onto the woman.
While she lay bleeding on the ground beneath the front portion of the car, the driver was observed getting off his seat and taking something from his vehicle.
After a few seconds, he approached the wounded woman and started striking her chest with an object before getting back in the car, running over the victim againt, and then speeding away.
BSP security guard Jason dela Torre, who noticed the fleeing car, found the badly wounded woman and immediately took her to the nearest hospital. The body was later taken to the St. Yvan funeral parlor for autopsy and identification.
De Ocampo told the Inquirer that investigators recovered the kitchen knife used by the killer and a mobile phone owned by the victim.
“We are going through the security camera footage which could identify the driver of the car and are attempting to access records on her mobile phone for her identification,” he said, adding that the police already had a lead to the killer based on accounts given by witnesses.