Guard sleeps through gas station heist

With relative ease and silence, four motorcycle-riding armed men robbed a Petron gasoline station in Caloocan City at dawn yesterday as the suspects completed the heist without even awakening the lone security guard.

Bethoven Abuan, 18, cashier and pump attendant of the Petron gas station located at Amparo Subdivision, Quirino Highway, Caloocan City, told police that the robbers divested him of some P7,000 representing the station’s earnings.

The suspects, riding in tandem on two motorcycles and armed with handguns, arrived at the station at about 3:15 a.m. and went directly to Abuan, the police said.

At gunpoint, the robbers divested Abuan of his cash collection, while security guard Primitivo Española of Black Panther Security Agency, was sound asleep at his post, and escaped unmolested.

In Malabon, an alert Northern Police District policeman arrested suspected robber Manuel Baculi Friday afternoon.

PO2 Elmer Oceo, of the NPDTactical Operations Center, nabbed Baculi while he was holding a cell phone he had taken from Richard del Rosario.

Del Rosario, 24, of 129, 9th Avenue, Grace Park Caloocan City, was on board a tricycle with Baculi along Langaray street in Malabon at around 4 p.m. when the suspect, armed with a fan knife, reportedly divested him of his P13,000 Nokia 8210 cellphone. – Pete Laude