Kidnap victim rescued

SANTIAGO CITY, Isabela – A kidnapped resident of Gattaran, Cagayan was rescued by a joint police-National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) team last Monday, five days after four men snatched him aboard a Cagayan-bound passenger bus in Nueva Vizcaya.

The victim, Rolly Vitos, was found in a safehouse in Diadi, Nueva Vizcaya, according to Chief Superintendent Dominador Resos Jr., Cagayan Valley police director.

Resos said the suspects, whom he identified as Percival Dulnuan, Mariano Batton, Pastor Miguel and Peter Lumibao, seized Vitos on board a Royal Eagle bus in Santa Fe, Nueva Vizcaya last July 10.

The suspects, negotiating with Vitos’ family via cellphones, initially demanded a P350,000 ransom but later reduced it to P250,000.

The payoff was then arranged at a refilling station along the national highway in Barangay Dubinan East here. But unknown to the suspects, a cousin of Vitos had reported the abduction to the Criminal Investigation and Detection Team here which, along with the regional police and NBI, laid out an entrapment.

At the payoff site, the suspects’ emissary, Nelson Gubo, took the money from a policeman who posed as a cousin of the victim. The police-NBI team trailed Gubo and cornered him at the city market.

During interrogation, Gubo pinpointed Vitos’ whereabouts. But the raid on a house in Barangay Ilut in neighboring Cordon town yielded nothing.

Dulnuan’s cousin Emilio was subsequently arrested, and it was his information that led to the rescue of Vitos in remote Diadi town. Vitos was hogtied and his mouth plastered with masking tape when the police-NBI team found him.

A manhunt is ongoing for the four suspects.