Kidnapped Tsinoy dumped in Pampanga

MABALACAT, Pampanga – Police are now tracking down the owner of a Mitsubishi space wagon used by three men who kidnapped a 30-year-old Filipino-Chinese in Binondo, Manila last Sunday and who dumped him here Tuesday morning.

Chief Superintendent Errol Pan, Central Luzon police director, said the victim, Thomas Sy, who was snatched on his way home on Reina Regente street in Binondo, was abandoned on a muddy road near the Mawaque resettlement site in Barangay Sapang Biabas.

Pan suspects that Sy’s kidnappers belong to a kidnap-for-ransom gang operating in Metro Manila, although no ransom was reportedly paid for Sy’s release.

Last Tuesday morning, Sapang Biabas residents Joel de la Cruz and Eduardo Samson saw three men alight from a Mitsubishi space wagon with license plate RDZ-146 to dump a man whose mouth was covered by packaging tape.

De la Cruz and Samson promptly informed the police which found Sy apparently unharmed.

Sy told police that three men whom he described as speaking with Chinese accent seized him while he was on his way home in Binondo last Sunday.

Sy said he was handcuffed and blindfolded and his mouth covered with packaging tape, and was kept in the toilet of a house someplace.

Police said Sy’s family did not pay any ransom to the kidnappers, adding though that they took his cellular phone and P10,000 in cash before dumping him here.

Pan flashed an alarm to other police units in Central Luzon and notified the police in Metro Manila for the arrest of Sy’s kidnappers.

As of yesterday, police were still checking the owner of the Mitsubishi van with the Land Transportation Office. – With Ric Sapnu