Manhunt on for pawnshop robbers

MANILA, Philippines - Four crack police teams were dispatched yesterday to go after the four men who robbed a pawnshop in a Pasay City mall Thursday.

National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) chief Director Alan Purisima said they are receiving “a lot of information as to what particular group is behind the robbery,” which interrupted the operation of the Metro Rail Transit and Light Rail Transit for several minutes.

He said his men are following up all the leads, but he has not yet received feedback from them. Purisima said the modus operandi used in the Tambunting pawnshop robbery is similar to that employed by the “Martilyo (Hammer) Gang” but he did not rule out the possibility that other gangs may be involved. The Martilyo Gang usually uses hammers or other blunt instruments to destroy display cases of pawnshops or jewelry shops, their favored targets.

Purisima said Southern Police District (SPD) police officers are in the thick of identifying the four robbers, whose images were caught by closed-circuit television cameras installed at the Metropoint Mall, located at the corner of EDSA and Taft Avenue. He appealed for more time for them to identify and arrest the perpetrators.

SPD head Chief Superintendent Benito Estipona said since they have already released the sketches, “the next stop is to get their names, and that’s what our investigators are focusing on.”

Chief Superintendent Juanito Vaño, NCRPO deputy chief for operations, said Pasay City police investigators have “good leads,” but refused to reveal them to avoid jeopardizing the manhunt.

He said that aside from a police team from Pasay and the SPD, teams from the Parañaque City police and the NCRPO’s Regional Police Intelligence and Operating Unit have joined the chase.

Though the Tambunting pawnshop reported that it lost P33 million to the robbers, Vaño said pawnshop officials “should present a proper inventory of the missing items for us to believe that their total losses reached P33 million.”

According to the pawnshop’s guards, one of the four robbers entered the pawnshop and poked a gun at them. Two more robbers entered the pawnshop and used iron pipes to destroy the display cases. A fourth man acted as a lookout.