An American police officer committed suicide on Tuesday morning in a police holding cell.
Donald Rene Ramirez, a 50-year-old police officer from San Francisco, was charged by the Phnom Penh court on October 27, 2006 on debauchery charges. He was charged with sexually abusing a 14-year old Vietnamese girl.
“Ramirez used a Cambodian security guard's gun to kill himself when the officer went to the bathroom”, says deputy director Keo Thea, of the office of Anti-Human Trafficking and Minor Protection.
Keo Thea went on to say that Ramirez was depressed after being found guilty, and expressed shame and regrets to one of his confidantes.
U.S. embassy spokesman, Jeff Daigle who was at the scene of the crime, says that the local police and the U.S. embassy will do their investigations, but declined to offer any more details.
Cambodia is well known for its child-sex trafficking, and recently Cambodian authorities have cracked down on pedophiles in a bid to clean up the country’s image.
Since 2003, over a dozen of foreigners have been jailed or deported to face trial in their home countries for child sex crimes.