Former soldier arrested for robbery

TARLAC CITY — Policemen here arrested a former soldier suspected of being a member of a robbery-holdup gang now believed to be also behind the proliferation of illegal drugs in this city.

Superintendent Tito Bayangos, city police chief, identified the detained suspect as Ariel Timpug, who was reportedly discharged from the military service and described as one of the members of a newly-formed criminal syndicate led by Romeo Mapatac.

Mapatac, who remains at large, was himself a former soldier, who was discharged for alleged gun-running activities while still in active service in Mindanao. His gang has been tagged to be behind a string of robberies and holdups in this city.

Timpug was arrested in his alleged hideout in remote Barangay Villa Bacolor by virtue of a search warrant issued by Judge Bitty Viliran of the Regional Trial Court’s Branch 65 here.

Found in his possession were bullets for a caliber .38 revolver, a tinfoil strip with suspected residue of metamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu, a small plastic pack allegedly containing shabu that weighed less than a gram, and shabu paraphernalia.

The illegal drugs were turned over to the Tarlac Provincial Crime Laboratory for examination, said Bayangos.

Police also earlier arrested one of Mapatac’s alleged close associates, a certain Jeffrey Salenga, in a raid in one of the gang’s alleged hideouts in Sitio Pasaldacan in Barangay Atioc.

Members of the criminal group are now the subject of a massive police manhunt following a series of robberies and holdups recently. — Benjie Villa