Cebu City police inching closer to unmasking killers of woman  from Panabo City


CEBU CITY – Police say they are “on the right track” in their efforts to find the killers of a 19-year-old woman whose body was stuffed and dumped by the road in Barangay Tisa here more than a week ago.

Police Lt. Col. Janette Rafter, deputy city director for operations of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), said investigators are confident that they can soon unmask the killers of Rhea Mae Tocmo.

“We already have persons of interest. We didn’t set a timeline but we can assure that we are focusing on solving this case,” said Rafter.

Tocmo was the woman from Panabo City, Davao del Norte whose body was found inside a cardboard box and dumped by the road in Barangay Tisa on July 17. She bore external injuries.

Autopsy report showed that the victim was strangled to death.

Rafter said all the 11 police stations under the CCPO are helping in the investigation.

The Mandaue City Police Office is also helping in the investigation by helping the CCPO gather security camera footage needed to identify the persons that the victim interacted with before she was found dead.

Tocmo stayed in a boarding house in Barangay Looc, Mandaue when she arrived in Cebu last June.

The victim’s friends and the people who were with her in the boarding house have been cooperative with the investigators, said Rafter.

Although Tocmo’s remains have already been brought to Misamis Oriental, there is no letup in the investigation, Rafter assured.

“We formed an investigating group here in CCPO and we tapped our intelligence personnel to augment the police stations involved in the investigation,” said Rafter.

Rafter said the CCPO is inching closer to unmasking the perpetrators as all the information that would lead to the identification of the perpetrators is already being gathered.

“We are on the right track because of the leads that we were able to secure. We are getting near to it,” Rafter said.