The death of 17-year-old Vaugh Carl Dicang, the latest in a string of teen deaths over the past month, was not drug related, according to police reports.
His older brother Van found him face down in a creek, according to a report in local newspaper SunStar Baguio.
He disappeared on Sept. 1 and was found last Thursday. While authorities rule out Dicang’s death as an extrajudicial killing, they are not ruling out robbery because some items were missing from his bag.
According to SunStar, his skull was cracked and his body was in an advanced decomposition stage when he was found.
Van also did not believe his brother’s death was drug related. “This was not an EJK (a case of extrajudicial killing),” Van was quoted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Prior to Vaugh, at least four other teenagers were killed or went missing in the past month. The most famous case being Kian delos Santos who was spotted on a CCTV camera being dragged to the spot where he was shot to death by police officers.
