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