4 boys nabbed for failed bank hit

MANILA, Philippines - Police arrested four boys who broke into a bank in Camarin, Caloocan City at past midnight yesterday.

The boys, aged 14 to 16, “were caught red-handed with at least four computer monitors while inside the bank” along Susano Road in Barangay 175 at around 12:10 a.m., Senior Police Officer 1 Noli Alvis told The STAR.

He said the boys – who admitted their crime – were detained yesterday at a jail cell in Caloocan Police Sub-station 5 until investigators find out “whether they were in cahoots with adults” in the failed burglary.

Alvis said that the bank’s guards failed to notice the burglars, who made a hole in the bank’s galvanized iron roof and climbed down to the bank manager’s office.

At around midnight, the Sub-station 5, under Chief Inspector Ronald Perilla, received information about an ongoing robbery in the bank.

Perilla, with Chief Inspector Riodante Ariza, led a Special Weapons and Tactics team and arrested the boys, who failed to open the bank’s vaults. The SWAT team caught the boys still clutching the computer monitors they stole from the bank manager’s office.

Alvis said the police will still file charges against the boys “and it would be up to the fiscal” to decide whether to pursue the case or to turn them over to the custody of the city’s social welfare department.

Under the juvenile justice law, persons under the age of 18 who are in conflict with law but acted without discernment are exempted from criminal liability.