Two men bungle bank robbery try

Two men fell through the ceiling of a Quezon City bank they allegedly tried to burglarize Thursday night, and were trapped inside until the bank’s guards noticed their presence.

Superintendent Carlito Feliciano, commander of the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) Station 11, believes the suspects planned to stay hidden in the ceiling for the rest of the night and throughout Friday before striking this weekend.

“They (suspects) brought with them loaves of bread and water,” Feliciano told The STAR in an interview.

Only Rudy Carballo, 42, was arrested in the bank while his cohort, Jojo Ortiz, 30, managed to escape.

Superintendent Franklin Moises Mabanag, chief of the QCPD-Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit, said Ortiz was arrested yesterday morning.

Mabanag said they were still interrogating Carballo and Ortiz to find out if they had other cohorts and how to locate them. The two men face attempted robbery charges.

At past 10 p.m. Thursday, one of the roving security guards of the Bank of the Philippine Islands heard a noise from inside the branch on Hemady street. When he looked through the glass door, he saw Ortiz looking back at him from inside the bank.

The guards then immediately called up the police station. However, when policemen arrived at the scene, only Carballo was left behind in the bank.

Upon inspection, the police found that the suspects gained entry by scaling the roof and creating a hole in the galvanized sheets using a metal saw, Feliciano said.

The ceiling, however, could not bear the suspects’ combined weight and gave way. The suspects fell and landed inside the bank just as the guards arrived to check on the branch.

According to Feliciano, they did not think the two suspects planned to stage the robbery that night because the metal saw was the only equipment recovered from them.

“We believe that after they had observed the bank from the ceiling, they would then inform their cohorts probably through text messages and then the cohorts will bring whatever equipment, like acetylene tanks, usually used in this type of break-in,” the police official noted.

“If they strike during the weekend, they would have a longer margin (to ransack whatever is) inside (the bank),” Feliciano said.