Thanks to cellphone tracking device, Cebu’s most wanted falls

CEBU CITY — Who said cellphone calls cannot be tracked?

When the long arm of the law finally caught up with Rey Torres Tuesday morning, it was because city policemen, armed with a tracking device, succeeded in monitoring his cellphone calls and pinpointed his whereabouts.

Torres, 36, the city’s most notorious robbery suspect and the most wanted man in Central Visayas, was captured in Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur, just next to his hometown of Ramon Magsaysay, after he was wounded in a shootout with a police posse from Cebu City led by Superintendent Paul Labra.

Torres is now under heavy police guard at the Pagadian City District Hospital where he is being treated for two gunshot wounds that broke his thigh.

Labra, interviewed briefly by The Freeman Tuesday night, said he and six other policemen from Cebu City had been hot on the trail of Torres and finally intercepted him near the boundary of Aurora and Ramon Magsaysay towns while he was on a motorcycle with two other men, speeding off from the direction of Tubod, Lanao del Norte.

Aside from Labra, the other Cebu City policemen in the team were Chief Inspector Marlou Martinez, Inspector George Ylanan, SPO3 Harvey Gumunit, SPO1 Adonis Dumpit, PO2 Arman Aliga and PO2 Nilo Arriola. No one among them was hurt in the shootout.

Labra said they arrived in Pagadian City Monday morning and went straight to Ramon Magsaysay where they suspected Torres had chosen to lie low after things became too hot for him in Cebu.

According to Labra, they were able to close in on Torres after they managed to secure his cellphone number and began to monitor his calls through a tracking device. He did not say what the device was.

Listening in on cellphone calls became controversial when audio tapes of a supposed cellphone conversation between President Arroyo and a Commission on Elections official while allegedly discussing cheating in the 2004 polls was made available to the public by former National Bureau of Investigation deputy director Samuel Ong, who is now linked to opposition attempts to oust the President.

Labra said when they learned that Torres was on his way from Tubod to his hometown of Ramon Magsaysay, they decided to intercept him on the highway.

Labra said he had to release the two companions of Torres, who were unhurt, because he did not have any legal ground to detain them, not having anything to do with the alleged crimes Torres committed in Cebu.

Torres, who had a P200,000 prize on his head, is believed responsible for a series of high-profile robberies in Cebu, including the heist in an East-West Bank branch last January. — Freeman News Service