NAGA CITY -- REPORTS REACHING the Police Provincial Office (PPO) here during the last 5-days from the localities of Calabanga, Libmanan, Bato, and Goa towns all in Camarines Sur province, noted the series of armed robberies perpetrated by armed men clad in bonnets.
Earlier, police provincial director Sr. Supt. Rodolfo Llorca has directed police chiefs in the first and fourth districts of the province where most of the armed robberies have occurred, to activate an "operational plan" required for municipal police stations (MPS) against organized crime groups.
The PPO reported on Monday (May 25) the latest of the armed robberies in Calabanga town, in which a collector for Lonel Merchandise, a certain Joel Marchan, 32, was robbed of his cash collection by armed men clad in bonnets, while riding an SVC motorcycle in Barangay Cagsao in the said town.
The armed suspects also took Marchan's SVC motor-bike and fled.
Last May 22, at Barangay Bagumbayan near Libmanan poblacion, victims Nichiban Que and his companion Melissa Templanuevo, both riding in tandem in a XRM Honda 125 motorcycle were also robbed by men wearing bonnets and armed with a shotgun and Cal 38 revolver.
The suspects took the couple's two cellphones, two wristwatches, a lady's bracelet, an undetermined amount of cash and their Honda motorcycle.
In Bato town, police Sr. Insp. Chito Oyardo also reported an armed robbery involving Felipe Montalla, a collector for Intertrade Credit Corp. based in Polangui, Albay, while traveling in his SVC motorcycle along the lake-side road boundary of Bato and Libon, Albay.
Oyardo bared that heavily armed men took at gun-point Montalla's cash collection worth P 6,340.00 pesos, a Nokia cellphone and crash helmet.
Also on May 22, three armed suspects with acetylene torch and hydraulic jack broke into the Western Union branch at San Jose St., Goa town. Branch manager Florence Benosa reported to the police that the suspects took from their vault Php 657,000 in cash and US $ 900 dollars also in cash.
The Investigation section of the PPO is trying to determine if the suspects in the different armed robberies belong to an identical group.