3 police teams hunting armored van robbers

Pasig police chief Senior Superintendent Raul Medina has dispatched three teams, composed of five officers each, to various areas in Metro Manila and neighboring cities to track down and arrest the perpetrators of an armored van robbery at the Ortigas Center the other day.

As this developed, police said four security guards, a bank teller and the driver of van will be subjected to lie detector tests, which is standard operating procedure, to erase suspicion of an "inside job."

"A lie detector test is part of the investigation. This does not mean that the six are now suspects in the robbery case," Medina pointed out.

The Pasig police chief said they have good leads in the case, but he refused to divulge them.

Medina said his investigators are showing witnesses photos from their files hoping that the suspects can be identified. A police artist is also preparing the cartographic sketches.

Police said they believe the robbers were professionals as the attack on the armored van was carefully studied.

"This is not the first time they pulled off a robbery. They moved with precision and speed," said Medina, noting that the robbery was over in three minutes. The robbers pulled off the heist last Monday just as the Eastern Police District (EPD) was celebrating its 32nd founding anniversary.

Medina said the suspects had knowledge of the van’s movement and even those of a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team that regularly passes the area.

"Our SWAT team on board bikes had just left the area when the robbers struck," he said.

At 10:10 a.m., an armored stopped in front of the Discovery Centre, not Discovery Suites building as earlier reported, after coming from the I-Bank main office in Makati City.

The van was delivering cash to I-Remit, a remittance company located at the 20th floor of the building, when the suspects emerged from a vehicle parked behind the van and sprayed the bank at the ground floor with bullets to scare off security guards and bystanders.

Two security guards, an HSBC valet driver and a bystander were hit. The suspects were able to grab a bag containing cash before speeding off.

Their vehicle was later recovered on Julia Vargas Avenue, where they transferred to another van.