2 burglary suspects slain in shootout

MANILA, Philippines - Two men reportedly caught in the act of hauling central processing units (CPUs) from an Internet shop in Quezon City were killed after they shot it out with responding policemen before dawn yesterday.

Operatives of the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) arrived at the shop on Tandang Sora Avenue within minutes after its owner, Augusto Cabala, called them that a neighbor told him unidentified men were taking CPUs from the shop.

“Had we not arrived there (when we had), the suspects would have taken everything from the shop. Another shop nearby had been victimized in the past and it could be the same group of robbers behind it,” Superintendent Marcelino Pedrozo Jr., head of the QCPD’s District Police Intelligence Operating Unit (DPIOU), told The STAR in an interview minutes after the encounter.

He said the two suspects shot at responding operatives of the QCPD-DPIOU led by Chief Inspector Enrico Figueroa at around 4 a.m. yesterday on Tandang Sora Avenue near the corner of San Roque Street in Barangay Tandang Sora.

The two slain suspects remain unidentified but police believe they and their two cohorts, who were able to escape, belong to a group of burglars who use bolt cutters and similar devices to enter their targeted shop.

Pedrozo said police recovered a bolt cutter and two .38 caliber revolvers from the suspects. “They had used the bolt cutter to destroy the lock of the steel gate. And after that, they smashed the glass window of the shop to get in,” he said.

Pedrozo said police also recovered two stolen CPUs from a GMC taxi (TXJ-521) the suspects earlier commandeered from a cabbie along Mindanao Avenue.

Pedrozo said that after the two slain suspects had fallen, a store owner came up and told the police that one of the killed burglars had been seen in the area, indicating that he had cased the Internet shop.