Cops in Cebu boy’s rescue to get awards

Police agents who rescued a kidnapped Grade 5 Cebuano pupil and arrested five of his abductors will receive special awards from the Philippine National Police.

PNP chief Director General Leandro Mendoza and Interior and Local Government Secretary Jose Lina will personally hand out the awards during a visit to Cebu City today.

The two officials will also hold a dialogue with the Chinese-Filipino and business communities in the southern city, and seek their cooperation with authorities, particularly in kidnap-for-ransom cases.

PNP spokesman Chief Superintendent Cresencio Maralit said the businessmen will be briefed on the peace and order situation in the region.

"We would like to reassure them that the police remain on top of the situation and that contrary to misconceptions, criminality has been on a downtrend," Maralit said.

Police pursuit operations forced the kidnappers of James Ryan Yu, 11, son of a wealthy Cebu businessman, to abandon the boy, who was seized while on his way to school last Monday.

The boy was found the other day inside a house at Bangko Cebuano Homes on Salinas Drive Extension in Cebu City.

Later in the afternoon, five of the kidnappers were arrested after a brief gunfight at the Davao international airport. Police laid out the dragnet as the boy’s stepbrother was supposed to deliver the ransom money.

Authorities said the kidnap-for-ransom syndicate apparently had a group which snatched and kept the boy in Cebu City, and another one in Davao City which negotiated the ransom.

The kidnapping group was said to be from Mindanao and intended the abduction to be a test case in Cebu and the rest of Central Visayas.

George Corpuz, head of the PNP’s Special Task Group, said the group’s leaders and negotiators were based in Davao and Iligan, and had a smaller group assigned in Cebu City to do the dirty work.

Police are hunting down the group’s other members in Cebu.

The boy, accompanied by his mother, was presented to the media past 4 p.m. Wednesday at the PNP regional headquarters. He was dressed in a blue t-shirt, gray shorts and slippers.

A diagonal cut, about an inch long, was visible above his nose, right between the eyes, and his wrists bore welts from being tied.

He appeared haggard and did not speak a single word during the media briefing, reportedly at the behest of his family. — Christina Mendez, Freeman News Service