Fisher nabbed for P4-M Landbank heist in Cebu

CEBU CITY — Police have arrested a fisherman from Cordova in connection with last Friday’s broad daylight robbery of a Landbank vehicle where at least five robbers carted away more than P4 million.

Members of a Pasil-based robbery gang were also arrested by the Mandaue City police in Danao City but it was not clear if this was related to the robbery. Police refused to give details.

The arrested fisherman, Mario Inoc, 41, is suspected of being the local contact of the robbers, whom police believe could be members of the Mindanao-based Kuratong Baleleng gang.

Inoc, however, denied having a hand in the robbery or being involved in illegal drugs after three packs of shabu was allegedly seized in his house, aside from an unlicensed caliber .22 revolver.

Cebu City police chief Lani-o Nerez, who led the raid, said the arrest was made following a tip that Inoc and a certain Hector Salcedo, also of Cordova, had links to the robbers.

A day before the robbery, a dark-green old model Toyota Corolla, resembling the one which the robbers had used, was reportedly seen parked in front of Inoc’s house.

Police, armed with a separate warrant, also raided the house of one Ricardo Pacaldo in Cordova where Salcedo was believed to be staying, but failed to find him (Salcedo).

Pacaldo’s wife Victorina said Salcedo does not live in the house but visits occasionally being a friend of her husband. She said Salcedo last visited them about a week ago.

Victorina said she was disappointed in the way police conducted the raid, claiming that apart from destroying the main door, they also ransacked her domicile.

Victorina said she was alone when the raiding team came. Pacaldo was in the wake of a friend.

She denied that her husband was involved in the robbery but admitted that he was a drug dependent.

PNP regional director Avelino Razon Jr. described the robbery as an isolated case and urged the public not to be alarmed about it.

Razon said the bank was also partly to blame for the incident because of its laxity in handling such a large amount of money.

A bank teller, accompanied by two guards and a driver, was to deliver the money aboard a company-owned Mazda pickup to a Landbank branch in Mandaue City.

Less than three minutes after leaving the Landbank’s main office on Osmeña Boulevard here, the pick-up stopped for a red light at the corner of P. del Rosario and Jakosalem streets. There, the robbers, brandishing Armalite rifles, disembarked from their Toyota Corolla and surrounded the bank’s vehicle.

The robbers shattered the pick-up’s windows and poked their rifles at the teller, the driver and their two escorts. In less than two minutes, the heist was over, becoming one of the quickest holdups in Cebu history. — Freeman News Service