Rob gang hits Cotabato pawnshop

COTABATO CITY – Robbers ransacked a pawnshop along a busy intersection here Sunday night and carted away still undetermined amount of cash and jewelries.

The suspects got through the Feroche Pawnshop by creating a hole on its rear wall using a portable electric drill, acetylene cutter, and a 10-ton manual hydraulic jack.

The pawnshop is located along the busy Sinsuat Avenue here, where establishments are guarded by security men from private agencies.

Senior Superintendent Rolen Balquin, director of the Cotabato City police, said investigators have yet to determine from the pawnshop's management how much cash and jewelry were taken during the heist.

Police said that the robbers checked in at a hotel at the back of the pawnshop and from one of its rooms, made their way through the establishment.

Investigators are now trying to determine the identities of the robbers based on testimonies of the hotel workers and copies security camera footage.

The incident came more than a week after gunmen, some of them armed with assault rifles, held up in a daring broad daylight attack a pawnshop at the downtown area here, about two blocks away from a police precinct and a company command post of the Marine Battalion Landing Team 1.

The owner of the pawnshop and two workers were wounded when the suspects traded shots with security guards, which left one of their cohorts wounded, whom they mercilessly finished off with several fatal shots as they fled bringing with them the cash and jewelry they took from the establishment.

Balquin earlier said the gunmen made sure responding policemen would not capture their wounded companion alive.