Friday, August 15, 2008 3 Mandaue offices lose cash, cameras; equipment taken from Balamban school
SUSPECTED Akyat Bahay gang members broke into three offices inside a commercial building in Mandaue City and ran away with P45,000 cash and other items before sunrise yesterday.
Last Tuesday night, three men also stole P400,000 worth of equipment from the Cebu Normal University (CNU) in Barangay Prenza, Balamban town.
Antonio Arias Jr., Teofilo Villacorte Jr. and Alfredo Antipol allegedly ran away with three microscopes, three computers, a sound system and a karaoke unit belonging to the school.
Police arrested them and recovered the stolen goods the next day.
Robbery charges were filed against the three yesterday before the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor. The complainant was CNU campus administrator Racquel Georsua.
Traces
In the Mandaue City robbery, Subangdaku police investigator Alfredo Andales said the burglars scaled the roof and entered Tanyongco building on M.C. Briones Highway.
Scene of the Crime Operation personnel lifted fingerprints at the crime scene and searched for possible traces that would lead police to identify the robbers.
Andales believes two to four persons ransacked Philtyres Corp., Sun Boxes Corp. and Cebu Profit and Trading Corp.
They were about to break into JMU Marketing but stopped for no apparent reason, said Andales.
The break-in was staged between 9 p.m. Wednesday and 3 a.m. Thursday.
The robbers went in through the roof at the back part of the building by breaking the ventilation window near the roof.
Once inside, they forced the doorknobs open and went straight to the “weak” vault and drawers where they got digital cameras from Sun Box and Cebu Profit, and cash from all three offices.
The robbery was discovered at 7:50 a.m. yesterday when cashier Loreta Rafols and driver Juan Villas entered Phil Tyres office.
Andales said the two found their things in disarray, scattered on the floor. The vault was forced open and its P16,000 cash was missing.
Rafols’ drawer was also forced open and its P4,000 cash was missing. Other items in the office were spared, though.
At Sun Boxes and Cebu Profit, their digicams and P25,000 cash were missing.
Laptop
The robbers, however, left behind a laptop belonging to Sun Box near the accordion door inside the building.
Andales believes that since the laptop is bigger than the slit of the accordion door, the robbers decided to leave it behind. He theorized that the robbers may have thought of scaling back to the roof and get inside the building through the front accordion door to reach the laptop.
In the CNU robbery, Prenza Barangay Captain Francisco Dumdum said that at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, he passed by the road along CNU on his way home aboard his motorcycle.
Beneath a mango tree, he saw a tricycle parked, bearing the plate no. GT 1436. The plate reflected off his motorcycle’s headlamp.
He said he then saw Arias and Antipol carrying equipment toward the tricycle. They were with another man later identified as Villacorte.
Dumdum said the scene he witnessed made him apprehensive, as he could not believe that CNU would hire personnel to haul equipment at that time of the night.
He then returned to the road along CNU, bringing some tanods along with him. But this time, there was no tricycle and no trace of the three men.
Campus administrator Georsua, in an affidavit, said that upon reaching the campus the next day, she heard reports that her office and the library had been ransacked the previous night.
True enough, she said she found the padlocks on her office door and on the library door to have been destroyed.
School staff reported the incident to the police while Dumdum aided them in identifying the suspects.
Three policemen said they invited Arias for questioning. Arias reportedly led them to a nipa hut being rented by Villacorte.
Outside the hut, police saw the getaway tricycle. They also saw the equipment and two sleeping persons inside the hut through an opening. They then arrested the suspects, who also allegedly led them to Barangay Baliwagan in Balamban, where one computer was allegedly delivered to Antipol.
Police arrested the three and recovered the stolen equipment. (OCP/KAB)
