Lapu cops urged to name suspects in church burglary

Let the police name the suspects.

This was the challenge posed by Fr. Fabian Cayetano, the Lapu-Lapu City Virgen of the Rule Parish finance officer, to the police, who said  they were closely looking into the possibility of an inside job in the Nov. 28 church burglary.

Cayetano said it’s but normal for police to consider inside job, but they should prove it first.

The tampering of the CCTV camera installed at the church bolstered police’s theory that there was indeed an inside job.

“How could we still view the video from the CCTV when we got there to fetch the video, we found out that a technician had already been hired to fix the CCTV,” said SPO2 Frederick Eslit of the Lapu-Lapu City Theft and Robbery Section last Friday.

Eslit said they’ll just have to wait for any new developments of the case since they had already exhausted efforts in their investigation.

Eslit said  they only had suspicions but don’t have any proof to pin anybody for the burglary.

Lapu-Lapu police chief Rey Lyndon Lawas agreed, saying there were leads that they were  following but they still had to evaluate if these were reliable.

Cayetano, for his part,  said the church would still keep those people who were guarding the church at the time of the burglary.

“We never fired anyone or re-assigned them because we never doubted them. There was no proof against them,” said Cayetano in Cebuano.

He said the church officials replaced padlocks on the Shrine’s entrance and exit doors.

They also fixed the ceiling to prevent the incident from happening again, installed new CCTV  cameras and more lights in dark areas of the church, and added more guards.

Cayetano also corrected earlier reports that the cost of the stolen items reached more than P1 million.

He said the stolen items were just worth around P200,000 because not all of them were real gold.

Cayetano also said that the money in the donation box was just P100,000 and not half a million pesos as earlier reported.

He added that he hopes  those who stole the jewelry of the Birhen sa Regla or Virgin of the Rule to feel remorse and return the jewelry./Correspondent Norman V. Mendoza