Northern-CIDG chief, Superintendent Simon Fernan III, said that Rodrigo Berenio, also listed as the No. 1 most wanted criminal in Western Samar, was apprehended at around 12:30 a.m. near the boundary of Camarin, Caloocan City North and Barangay Maligaya in Quezon City.
Berenio, a trusted man of the Alinso-ot Group, was being hunted by the police for the killing of Dodie Labian, a brother of a National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agent in 1981 in Navotas, and the murder of Pededing Patente, a barangay tanod in Daram, Western Samar in 2002.
Fernan said that Berenio is also the prime suspect in the murder of Pededing’s older brother, Barangay Chairman Eleuterio Patente of Barangay Jacopon also in Daram.
The suspect is also wanted by the Malabon City police for the rob-slay of a businessman in the city in 1990.
The Northern-CIDG agents, composed of Senior Inspector Francis Gordon, PO3 Dandie Bonita, PO3 Rex Casinos, PO2 Joaquin Florendo, and PO2 Benjamin Ramos, armed with warrants of arrest issued by Malabon City Judge Amanda Valera Cadigao and Judge Odelon Mabutin of Daram-Zumarraga, Samar, arrested the suspect in his lair as he was about to go to the Navotas fish port complex.
According to Bonita, Berenio, alias Rudy or Ambo, passes himself off as a fish trader.
The gang, he added, is operating in Manila Bay and the seas of Malabon-Navotas, as well as in Samar, Masbate and Bataan.