Monday, September 01, 2008 Cab driver, pal rob nursing coed By Ernie Olson Jr.
BAGUIO City Police Office (BCPO) warned taxicab passengers Sunday to be very careful in checking if somebody else is inside the taxi, aside from the driver, before boarding.
The warning was issued after a teenaged coed was found unconscious with packing tape covering her eyes, mouth and tying her hands along Ambiong Road in the wee hours of Wednesday.
The victim was robbed by two men inside a taxi. She was rushed to the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, where she stayed unconscious for hours.
The victim was described on police records to be 18, single, a nursing student of the University of Baguio, who hails from San Nicolas, Pangasinan.
She was discovered lying unconscious along Ambiong Road at 12:30 a.m. of August 27 by a taxi driver who identified himself as Gabriel Baniaga Turalde, 49, a resident here of Purok 1, BGH Compound.
The driver reportedly found her there, while driving through Ambiong Road onboard a taxi bearing license plate number AYM-906 and the trade name "Mr. Bean”.
"Her eyes and mouth were covered with packing tape, and her hands were also tied with packing tape," said Chief Inspector Arthur Bomogao, chief of BCPO-Station 6.
He said although initially unidentified, they only found out the victim's name and personal circumstances, after they called her father on her cellular phone.
"The victim is now confined at the hospital and was still reported to be unconscious as of this writing," Bomogao added.
However, after a follow-up investigation was conducted, the victim revealed that she was last conscious sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. of August 26, when she flagged down a taxicab along Ambiong Road and instructed its driver to take her to Buhagan (formerly Bokawkan) Road.
"After a few minutes, when I was about to save the license plate number of the taxi on my cellular phone, I heard a person coughing at the back. But when I was about to turn around, a man grabbed me from behind and covered my mouth with a handkerchief doused with something which made me dizzy and unconscious," she told police investigators.
This was when the still unidentified men divested her of one of her cellular phone, rings, earrings, and P500 cash before covering her eyes and mouth with packing tape, and tying her hands together with the same.
Before the perpetrators escaped, they abandoned the victim along a dark stretch of Ambiong Road, where she was found by another passing taxicab driver about three hours later.
According to police, this robbery with violence case was still undergoing a follow-up investigation by BCPO-Station 6 personnel as of press time Sunday afternoon.
