She was killed for a pair of gold earrings and ring worth about $32, in a rice field a little more than one kilometer from her village in Kandal province, according to police who said yesterday they were still shocked by the crime.
Eight-year-old Kiet Sievly was persuaded to follow a 16-year-old girl from her village in the province’s Damnak Ampil commune to swim in a nearby canal. They left Tunlorp Kpos Cheung village in the middle of the afternoon, sharing a single bicycle.
About one kilometer from the village the teen took Kiet Sievly into a rice field and choked her until she fainted, police said. After she fell into the ankle-deep water, the teen then pushed her face first into the mud and stepped on her back until she suffocated, police said.
“No crime like this has ever happened in this district,” Thach Sovanna, Ang Snoul district chief of justice police, told Khmer Times yesterday. He said the teen confessed to the killing, saying she was poor and needed the money. The teenage girl also confessed that she sold the earrings for $25 and the ring for 30,000 riel ($7.50) at a market in the district, Mr. Sovanna said.
He said the dead child’s mother began looking for her on Friday evening after she returned from the garment factory where she worked. The suspect joined other residents in the search for the girl, Mr. Sovanna said.
After the body was found and returned to the village, the suspect fled, police said.
She did not go far, staying in the bushes behind her house. This was enough to raise the suspicions of investigators, who told the suspect’s mother to inform them as soon as her daughter returned home.
The 16-year-old – who had been married but is now divorced, according to police – returned home on Saturday because she was hungry. Her mother, who had been warned she could face charges if she did not alert police about her daughter’s whereabouts, called the police as soon as she returned.
They said the teen confessed to the crime at the district police station.
“We will send her to the court tomorrow [Monday] for formal charges,” Mr. Sovanna said
This child-on-child killing is the third so far this year, according to a child-protection officer at an NGO who works with police to investigate crimes against children.
“It is difficult to understand the murder of any child. It makes it even harder to comprehend when the offender is a child,” said James McCabe, director of the Cambodian Children’s Fund child protection unit (CPU), adding that the NGO has seen an increase in crimes committed by children against other children. “We need to find answers as to why such young offenders are capable of committing the most horrific of crimes.”
“This was a senseless act of cruelty and violence committed against a small eight-year-old girl for $32 of jewelry. It is very difficult to comprehend.”
Child Murdered for Earrings, Ring | Khmer Times | News Portal Cambodia |