Stolen motorcycles found in Sultan Kudarat shop

SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines - Agents searching for two murder suspects on Tuesday accidentally discovered a shop in Esperanza town keeping more than a dozen stolen motorcycles.

Combined operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and other police units in the province were to check on the reported presence of two men implicated in Sunday's murder of SPO4 Ruben Sabado in a shop in Barangay Ilian in Esperanza, but ended up impounding stolen motorcycles instead.

Inspector Christian Garcia, provincial chief of CIDG for Sultan Kudarat province, said they carried out the raid after receiving a tip that Sabado's killers were spotted in the motorcycle shop.

Sabado, assigned at the Sultan Kudarat provincial police office, was shot dead last Sunday by two gunmen who also took his Honda 200R motorcycle and escaped toward Barangay Ilian in west of Esperanza.

Garcia said the suspects had left the shop for somewhere before they arrived to arrest them.

Garcia said operatives of the police’s Highway Patrol Group and employees of the Land Transportation Office are now helping determine the owners of the recovered motorcycles.