Dad Suspects Foul Play After Vietnamese Police Rebuff 6-Year-Old Son’s Alleged Rape

Police in the southern province of Dong Nai, Vietnam on Monday ruled out a possibility of rape in the death of a six-year-old boy who died recently after being inside a car for too long, Thanhnie news reports. The spokesperson of the provincial police department, Colonel Nguyen Van Tho, reportedly stated that, “Our autopsy has found that the cause of death was suffocation.”

The boy died at the Dong Nai Children’s Hospital where doctors say he suffered a serious brain injury due to a prolonged and serious lack of oxygen.

However, the boy’s father, Nguyen Van Vu, explained that he and his wife were working at a carpentry workshop in Trang Bom District on Friday afternoon when they realized that their little boy had gone missing.

As they were looking around for their child, they saw a strange man emerge from a roadside coffee shop. The man went into his car and carried out their missing son from the vehicle.

Vu said he was brought out unconscious and naked; he and his wife rushed their child to a nearby hospital, which then transferred the boy to the Dong Nai Children’s Hospital in serious condition. Vu believed his son had been raped. “I heard some of the doctors discuss… and they said my son might have been raped. When I held him, I saw bruises,” he said.

Vu revealed that the stranger, who claimed that the boy had got into his car without his knowledge and had accidentally locked himself in, gave his family VND2 million (US$89), to pay the medical costs and has been identified by the police.

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However, Vu said he was not satisfied with both the stranger’s explanation and the investigators’ conclusion; he says,

“My boy was very shy, so I don’t believe he opened the car and got in.”

The grieving dad said his family was too poor to send their son to school; instead they let him play at the workshop while they worked. The stranger is believed to have come to the workshop several times to purchase goods; he has been interrogated by the police.