“When the witnesses reached the location where the suspect was, he ran away and jumped into the Klang river,” he said in a statement.
“Some people who attempted to apprehend the man ran along the banks of the Klang river to tail him, and saw him bob up and down and then disappear under the current and believe the man had drowned,” he added.
Prior to the chase, Gan said one witness claimed to have seen the man molesting the child while battering her head and doing something to her neck.
The witness had then rushed over with a few other people to save the child as the suspect repeatedly struck her head.
Gan said the child, aged two years and six months, went missing after her 32-year-old mother, who was at the Kotaraya shopping mall with a few friends at around 3pm yesterday, went to the toilet.
Her mother, a local who is jobless and homeless, had asked her friends to watch over the child. The girl was missing when her mother returned from the toilet five minutes later.
Based on her statement taken before midnight last night, Gan said the mother and her friends scoured the entire mall to look for the child but found no trace of her.
Police are now conducting a search for the suspect's body in the Klang river with the help of the Fire and Rescue Department, Kuala Lumpur City Hall and the Civil Defence Department.
Gan said they are still investigating the motive behind the incident, which has been classified as murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code.
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