Eight-year-old Jin Nichole You was bundled into the baggage and carted away in footage captured on security cameras.
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Yet her family endured an agonising wait for news after becoming alarmed by her absence in the town of Bakilid in the Philippines.
They had been expecting her to enter the building on Thursday morning before worried mum Tyree Rendal checked the block’s CCTV.
She saw someone in a hoodie inside the property’s gates, dragging along a large black suitcase.
Police in Mandue City in the Cebu province were called and launched a search for the missing child – eventually tracking down a suspect to an apartment in the same district later that evening.
They arrested 32-year-old Godiflor Rama, caretaker of the apartment block where the victim and her parents lived.
And officers discovered Jin dishevelled but alive, before she was taken to the Women and Children’s Protection Desk of nearby Subangdaku police station to talk about her ordeal.
Jin, who has duel Filipino and Korean nationality, has now been safely reunited with her mum, who said: “I would like to thank the police and investigators from the bottom of my heart.
“They acted swiftly just to save my daughter.
“I couldn’t imagine that this kind of thing would happen to us. We love Jin so much – everyone knows what a good girl she is.
“Everyone’s effort will not be wasted. We will proceed with the legal case to obtain justice for my daughter.”
The suspect has now spoken to local media, saying: “I hope the family can forgive me for what I did.
“I only did that because they were accusing me of stealing their belongings, like their bags and hangers.
“I admit that the girl is attractive, but that doesn’t mean that I like her – I did not rape her, I did not sexually assault her.”
Police say he exploited his knowledge of the family to carry out his abduction plan.
Last November in the Philippines a 13-year-old boy was knocked unconscious and had to have a lung removed after being flung from a spinning fairground carousel.
That was a month after a kidnap victim was rescued elsewhere in the country having been locked in a dog cage for 20 days and beaten with baseball bats.
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