A patrol personnel watches over the suspect following the discovery of the teenage girl’s body inside the car boot.
MIRI: The body of a 13-year-old girl – strangled to death by her mother’s lover – was discovered inside the boot of a car following a high-speed chase by police here yesterday evening.
State CID chief Datuk Dev Kumar said the discovery was made around 6pm when a police patrol unit spotted a sedan car parked near a bush along Jalan Perlis in Kuala Baram.
“The boot of the car was open and a man was standing next to it. When he saw the patrol personnel, he rushed back into the car and sped off,” he said in a statement.
According to Dev Kumar, police chased after the suspect for five kilometres before forcing him to stop at the junction leading to Miri Port.
“Upon instructing the man to open the boot, patrol personnel discovered the body of a girl inside and immediately arrested the suspect.”
He said initial investigation revealed that the 33-year-old suspect, who works at a furniture shop in Piasau, is the boyfriend of the girl’s mother.
The suspect, he added, lives together with the woman, the victim as well as the victim’s elder sister in a rented house in Permyjaya.
“The incident occurred in the morning after the victim’s mother left for work and the elder sister, to school.
“An argument is said to have broken out between the girl and the suspect around 11am, during which time the suspect is believed to have strangled the girl to death.
“The suspect then placed the girl’s body in the boot of the car and was preparing to dump her remains in a bush when he was spotted by patrol personnel in Kuala Baram,” said Dev Kumar.
He also congratulated the patrol personnel, corporal Mohd Izwan Jamaludin and corporal Eddy Abdullah, for apprehending the suspect and solving the murder case, saying it was a classic example of observant police work.