Mystery car yields P16-M shabu

A Honda Civic sedan abandoned by a Chinese-looking couple on a dimly-lit road in Fairview, Quezon City the other day yielded some eight kilos of shabu estimated at P16 million.

Central Police District (CPD)director Chief Superintendent Napoleon Castro said his investigators are still verifying the ownership of the Civic (WHJ-515), where the illegal drug was found.

Police presented the shabu along with other seized illegal drugs, firearms and recovered vehicles to Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. in a press conference yesterday. Fifteen suspected criminals arrested in separate operations were also presented.

Castro told The STAR that a mobile team from the Fairview police station under Superintendent Jolly Dizon spotted the car while on routine patrol along Regalado Avenue, Fairview at around 12:25 a.m. last Thursday.

A man and a woman fled after seeing approaching policemen. The car was locked with the keys still in the ignition.

The cops tried to chase the fleeing couple but to no avail.

Dumbfounded, the officers towed the car to the Fairview police station.

Castro said the station commander later received a call from an unidentified caller later in the day offering P2 million in exchange for the return of the vehicle

"At this juncture, Col. Dizon became curious why anybody would be willing to get back a car, model 2000, for P2-million," he said.

When the officers opened the car, they found eight kilos of shabu placed inside a backpack.

Castro said Dizon tried to set an entrapment operation in front of the East-West Bank branch at SM Fairview for the arrest of the claimant of the car. Dizon negotiated with the caller for a rendezvous at 8 p.m. last Thursday but no one arrived, apparently after seeing police presence at the meeting area.

Castro later said the policemen who found the car may have stumbled on a big drug deal waiting to take place.

"It is part of the modus-operandi of drug traffickers to just exchange cars in the delivery of illegal drugs," he said.

Meanwhile, authorities apprehended a 25-year-old man and confiscated from him about 30 Ecstasy tablets during a buy-bust operation in Libis, Quezon City.

Suspect Francis Memoracion Raymundo is now detained at the CPD headquarters awaiting proper charges to be filed against him.

Belmonte said that the seized tablets were worth P60,000.

Raymundo was collared after police conducted an operation at about 9:40 p.m. the other day in front of the Bacolod Chicken House. Later a Filipino-Chinese was arrested after tried to bribe policemen for Raymundo’s release.

Belmonte lauded the local police force for their "continued success against crime." – With Matthew Estabillo