10 GMA-7 guards investigated over botched burglary

MANILA, Philippines - Around 10 security guards of GMA-7 will be subjected to lie detector tests following a burglary attempt at the television station’s compound in Quezon City earlier this month, during which a security guard was shot, police said yesterday.

The security guards who were on early-morning duty on March 8 were also subjected to paraffin tests, said Chief Inspector Enrico Figueroa, chief of the Quezon City police’s theft and robbery investigation section.

Figueroa said one of the guards had tested positive for gunpowder burns.

“We’re subjecting these security guards to these tests because of the possibility that that the incident was an inside job,” he told The STAR in an interview.

The police official noted that there was no sign of forced entry at the cooperative store operated by the network’s employees union.

An armed burglar was said to have entered the cooperative store at around 3 a.m. that day. The guard tried to accost the suspect, who pointed a gun at him. They struggled, and the suspect shot the guard in the arm and chest before escaping.

The suspect, who was not able to take the cash from the store’s vault, left behind a pair of pliers, a mask, and a screwdriver at the crime scene.

Superintendent Ferdinand Ampil, commander of the QCPD-Station 10, said that after learning that a security guard tested positive for gunpowder burns, he requested the network’s security officer, inviting the on-duty security guards to his office. Ampil said the security guards have not been presented to him.

Ampil also expressed disappointment that a GMA-7 official was asking for an update on the case when “they’re not cooperating.”

GMA-7’s legal counsel Viney Ibarra said “the company is treating it as a simple burglary.” Ibarra said they are not discounting the possibility of an inside job but said it may have been committed by “criminal groups outside GMA.”

Ampil also expressed disbelief that the burglar was able to penetrate the GMA Network compound, citing it was heavily guarded.     – Reinir Padua