Couple yields P1.08M shabu during sting op

CEBU, Philippines - Lapu-Lapu City policemen yesterday morning arrested a couple allegedly involved in the selling of illegal drugs during a buy-bust operation in Barangay Calawisan.

Reynaldo Mabulis and his wife Elvira, residents of Barangay Labangon, Cebu City, yielded a medium-size, heat-sealed plastic sachet containing white crystalline substance believed to be shabu worth P120,000 they handed to a poseur buyer.

A subsequent search following their arrest also resulted to the confiscation of two large packs of suspected shabu worth P960,000.  The police also recovered the boodle money and the marked money used during the operation.

Lapu-Lapu police described the couple as level two drug pushers operating in the city and capable of disposing 150 to 200 grams of shabu a week.

After one of police surveillance, the Mabulises were arrested inside a taxicab when they arrived in Zone Lato, Calawisan and handed illegal drugs to an undercover policeman.

The entrapment operation was made possible with the help of concerned residents coordinated with Acting City Police Chief Armando Radoc, who immediately tasked Senior Insp. Rogelio Pineda Jr. of the City Anti-Illegal Drugs Office to go after the couple.

“This is a good break for the police considering the fact that the volume of illegal drugs that are disposed (by the couple). I believe that based on the evidence, these are one of the big personalities and considered as level two drug pushers in Lapu-lapu City,” said Radoc.

Pineda said they received information last week that the couple deal drugs not only in Calawisan but in other Lapu-lapu City as well.

Barangay Calawisan is one of the top barangays of Lapu-Lapu City where illegal drugs is a problem.

Last December, a suspected drug pusher was shot dead while four others, including a 73-year-old widower and a 16-year-old boy, were arrested in separate buy-bust operations in the barangay.

Informed of yesterday’s successful operation, Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Paz Radaza lauded the police on the couple’s arrest.  She directed the barangay’s officials to assist the police in their campaign against illegal drugs.—/RHM (FREEMAN)