12 men rounded up over slay of UP stude

Twelve persons were rounded up in a squatters’ area in Sta. Mesa, Manila yesterday as police stepped up its hunt for the suspects in the rob-slay of a University of the Philippines (UP) scholar inside a passenger bus nearly two weeks ago.

Western Police District (WPD)-Homicide Section head Chief Inspector Alejandro Yanquiling said the operation was conducted to snare the three suspects who are reportedly hiding in one of the shanties at the railroad tracks in Sta. Mesa, particularly in Paltok.

The suspects are reportedly members of the "Batang Davao" gang.

Marie Joy Latao, a third-year pharmacy student of the University of the Philippines, was reportedly aboard a G-Liner bus on her way home to Sta. Mesa on Sunday morning when three armed men boarded the bus and announced a heist near Valencia St. along Ramon Magsaysay Boulevard.

Witnesses said Latao resisted the men trying to get her belongings and was shot three times by the robbers. She was rushed to the Lourdes Hospital where she expired at about 11:30 p.m. of the same day.

The victim’s mother, an overseas worker based in Taiwan, who went home after being informed by relatives that her daughter was missing, identified Marie Joy’s body at the morgue of the Floresco Funeral Parlor.

The background of the 12 persons rounded up by the police in connection with the murder were verified with the Criminal Record and Investigation and Warrant sections of the WPD.

They were eventually released, however, to their guardians.