15 men rob LPG shop of P1 M

Armed men posing as police officers took away around P1 million in cash after they barged into an office of a liquefied petroleum gas distributor in Quezon City at midnight yesterday.

The employees of Capitol Allied Trading (CAT Gas) were hogtied with plastic handcuffs by 15 suspects, wearing black jackets and carrying long firearms, who broke into the shop on Visayas Avenue in Barangay Vasra.

This early, police see a link between the suspects in yesterday’s robbery to those who staged the heist at the warehouse of sister soda companies RC and Zesto Cola in Novaliches last April.

Superintendent Franklin Moises Mabanag, chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit of the Quezon City Police District, said the employees of CAT Gas identified at least one of the suspects from the RC Cola heist.

“It could be the same group of people. They used the same modus operandi. They hogtied the employees and introduced themselves as law enforcers to gain entry into the establishments,” Mabanag told reporters in an interview.

Mabanag said they were checking the records of the management of the North Luzon Expressway, specifically its CCTV monitors. He said the suspects entered Metro Manila via the Tabang Interchange of the NLEX.

This was based on a receipt found in a bag that was left behind by the suspects that also contained several plastic handcuffs.

Based on investigation, the suspects arrived at midnight and introduced themselves as policemen. Since there was no security guard at the shop, the suspects easily gained entry.

Once inside, they bound the employees and smashed the vault containing the shop’s earnings over the weekend.

Mabanag noted that the shop could be considered as a “soft target” since it did not have any security personnel. He also said they were looking into the link between armed groups to the security provider of armored vehicles that transport cash remittance of shops in the city.

“It could be that these robbery groups are getting their information from the (provider or security detail of) armored vans that collect the cash remittance of these shops... And usually, the members of robbery groups are formerly connected with security agencies,” he said.