Caloocan apartment a drug depot – EPD

MANILA, Philippines - A Caloocan City apartment where at least 10 kilos of shabu, which has a street value of around P60 million, was found during a raid Friday night is actually a depot for illegal drugs due for distribution, Eastern Police District (EPD) director Chief Superintendent Miguel Laurel said yesterday.

Laurel said the two-story apartment – rented by Dong Jin Chen, 29, and Wang Yong Gui, 30, natives of Fujian province – at 202 D. Aquino street off 10th Avenue is a “transshipment point” where finished products are stockpiled.

Laurel said they have yet to establish where Dong and Wang get their supply of illegal drugs. The EPD has asked the apartment’s manager for a copy of the footage taken by the establishment’s surveillance camera to help identify the two Chinese drug suspects’ accomplice.

Operatives from the EPD, Northern Police District (NPD), the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the city police, led by Senior Superintendent Rimas Calixto, raided the suspects’ apartment at around 9:30 p.m. Friday.

“We found a black traveling bag in a room on the second floor that contained some eight kilos of high-grade shabu and two kilos more hidden in a cabinet and a box containing four bottles of chemicals,” Superintendent Remus Medina, EPD intelligence chief, told The STAR.

Medina said the police learned about the illegal drugs at the apartment when EPD anti-narcotics operatives, led by Senior Inspector Virgilio Santiago, arrested Dong and Wang with two other suspects in a drug bust Thursday in Greenhills, San Juan City, where they reportedly yielded two kilos of shabu worth some P12 million.

“They were the ones who led us to this place,” Santiago said.

Ma. Christina Cimenes, the apartment’s administrator, said Dong and Wang, who introduced themselves as traders of bags and shoes with a store in Baclaran, rented the apartment starting June 15 for P20,000 a month.

“I did not observe anything unusual about their activity,” Cimenes said.

Members of anti-narcotics units from the Caloocan police and the EPD were already posted in the area as early as 7 p.m. Friday but they were only able to enter the apartment when a search warrant issued by Judge Fernando Sagun Jr. of Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 78 arrived.

Caloocan City Prosecutor Darwin Canete, NPD director Chief Superintendent Antonio Decano, Senior Superintendent Ranier Espina, Chief Inspector Rodrigo Soriano, Chief Inspector Bartolome Tarnate and several barangay officials were also present during the raid.