A 16-year-old is on the run after shooting a man dead so that he could rape his 14-year-old daughter in Banteay Meanchey province’s Malai district on Friday, police said.
Kuth Chan Heng, Malai district police chief, said the murder occurred at about 1 a.m. in Pung Rol commune’s O’Ampil village.
“The suspect…killed Nat Sol, 42, with an SKS [rifle] before he raped his 14-year-old daughter…in the middle of the night,” Mr. Chan Heng said.
“The suspect killed Mr. Nat Sol because he was afraid that he would interfere [in the rape] and tell his [own] father,” Mr. Chan Heng said, explaining that the suspect’s father was friendly with the slain man.
After killing Nat Sol, the teenager then woke his 14-year-old daughter who threatened to tell her father. The suspect, however, told her that her father had gone into the village, the police chief said.
A second daughter, aged 10, was also in the small wooden house when the murder and rape took place. She was unharmed, the police chief said.
The murdered man, who was shot in the back of the head, lived on a plot of land that he owned along with the suspect’s family and a third party, he added.
The suspect did not flee the village immediately, but waited until the next morning and only absconded, with three guns stolen from his father, when the terrified 14-year-old finally felt safe enough to reveal to villagers what had happened the night before.
“The suspect must be captured and must pay for this heinous crime,” Mr. Chan Heng said, adding that local villagers have been warned to avoid going into the forest or to their farms alone because of the danger the teenager poses.
