Saturday, October 13, 2007 Mandaue police on stakeout for gasoline stations’ robbers
THE Mandaue City Police Office (MCPO) has located the area where suspects in last Thursday dawn’s gasoline station robberies are based.
“We are on standby in the area, waiting for them to come out,” said MCPO Acting Director Rodel Calungsod.
He said they are simultaneously hunting down the suspects and preparing robbery complaints against them. Calungsod, however, decided to withhold one suspect’s identity and his whereabouts, saying only that he is staying in the city’s outskirts.
They can only reveal the suspect’s identity once they confirm he is the wanted person in their file and arrest him, Calungsod added.
Sun.Star Cebu published yesterday a photo of one of the suspects, whose movements a security camera captured. He wore glasses, a green shirt with black stripes and eyeglasses, and brandished a .45 pistol.
This “chinky-eyed” person may be the wanted man in their files, Calungsod said. But even without an arrest warrant, the police can still arrest him as part of hot pursuit operations.
MCPO investigators are now securing the guy’s photograph for the case file to support the robbery complaint, together with the affidavits of victims and witnesses.
Two men on a black Yamaha Crypton motorcycle robbed three gasoline stations within a span of 30 minutes Thursday dawn and carted away P29,000 in cash and valuables.
A gas station in Cebu was robbed at 4 a.m., followed by a Shell station in Mandaue City at 4:20 a.m. and another Caltex station in the same city at 4:30 a.m.
A security camera at the second station captured the suspects’ features and the security guard at the third station confirmed that it was the same person who robbed them.
Though the pattern and suspects’ descriptions match, victims from the first gas station have yet to confirm if these were the same persons who robbed them. (OCP)
