But the robbery was only reported yesterday, prompting police to suspect an inside job.
Police said the lone suspect, who was dressed decently, pulled into the Flying V gasoline station located along Sandoval Avenue in Barangay San Miguel in a white Nissan Sentra around 11:55 p.m.
At gunpoint, the man ordered employees to open the vault.
When nobody came forward, the gunman pistol-whipped Ben Quartel, 30, who immediately opened the vault.
The gas station’s employees described the robber as handsome. "He looked decent. You wouldn’t expect that he’d do something like that," Quartel said. "We were all taken aback. Our female employees were so shaken because it happened so quickly."
Before leaving, the gunman ordered gas station employees not to report to the police.
But investigators suspected that it was an inside job. "He seemed too confident to pull a heist all by himself like that, which isn’t usually the case. And how did he know that the station had a lot of money," one officer said.
He also wondered why the gasoline station employees didn’t report the incident to the police right away. Quartel made a report only yesterday.