A 9-year-old Vietnamese girl whose body was found near a drainage ditch in Chiba Prefecture on Sunday appears to have been murdered sometime between Friday morning and Saturday night, investigators said Tuesday.

Police believe Le Thi Nhat Linh was strangled at an unknown location and then dumped at the spot in Abiko where her body was found early Sunday morning, an investigative source said.

Separately, NHK reported Tuesday that a classmate heard from Linh last month that she saw a suspicious person on the way to school in January and that she felt scared. Since then, Linh hurried through the area where the person had appeared whenever she went to school, NHK quoted the classmate as saying.