PETALING JAYA: Police have found the body of the man who allegedly beheaded a two-year-old girl in the Klang River near Jalan Tun Sambanthan, bringing a closure to the case.

The body was found floating in the river near Bandar Sunway here yesterday.

The man was said to have abducted Siti Soffea Emelda Abdullah and beheaded her with a ceramic tile on Thursday before jumping into the river in an attempt to escape.

Kuala Lumpur CID chief Senior Asst Comm Gan Kong Meng said a passer-by spotted the body at about 2.30pm and alerted policemen who were on patrolling duty in Bandar Sunway.

“With the help of the Fire and Rescue Department, we managed to recover the body from the river at about 3pm near Taylor’s University,” he said in a statement yesterday.

SAC Gan said the suspect was found wearing a red checkered shirt, blue pants with a belt and was barefooted.

He added that the suspect did not have any personal identification documents on him.

SAC Gan said the physical appearance of the body matched the description of the suspect that was given by witnesses.

“We believe that this case has been solved with the recovery of the suspect’s body. The body will be sent to Kuala Lumpur Hospital for post-mortem,” he said, adding that police were still working to verify the identity of the suspect through finger prints and find out the motive of the brutal murder.

A police source said that witnesses of the incident had already identified the suspect through photos.

“They have confirmed that it was him that they saw during the incident,” the source said.

Police believed that the suspect was a man who was released from prison recently and had previous criminal records, mostly drug-related.

The source said the man had worked as a parking attendant near the Kota Raya shopping complex in Kuala Lumpur where the girl was abducted.

Siti Soffea was with her mother Siti Salmy Suib, 32, who left the toddler with her friends as she needed to use the toilet on the fourth floor of the complex at about 3pm on Thursday.

When she came back about five minutes later, Siti Soffea was not with her friends.

They searched the building but could not find her. Siti Salmy only learnt of what had happened to her daughter when police tracked her down and alerted her later that night.

CCTV footage in the complex showed the man walking away with Siti Soffea while several witnesses saw a man carrying her towards the river bank, about 1.5km from the complex at 9pm.

The witnesses claimed that they saw the attacker slashing at the girl’s neck with a broken piece of tile.