Shopper hit by stray bullet as armed robbers take jewelry from mall pawnshop

ZAMBOANGA CITY – Armed men stormed into a pawnshop inside the Gaisano Mall in Pagadian City at 1:45 p.m. Sunday, carting away an undetermined worth of jewelry from the glass display cases.

Chief Supt. Edgar Basbas, the regional police director of Western Mindanao Police, said a female shopper was injured by a stray bullet in the knee but he added that an earlier claim made by a witness inside the mall about the killing of a security guard has not been confirmed as of this posting.

Basbas said the robbers first brought hammers from the mall’s hardware store before robbing the M Lhuillier jewelry-pawnshop shop.

Basbas said the robbers, armed with pistols, disarmed the security guard and “used the hammers to break glass cabinets and carted away the jewelry.”

Other mall security guards engaged the robbers in a shoot-out. The robbers escaped on board three motorcycles.

A female shopper, lawyer Beverly Travero, was hit in the knee by a stray bullet and was rushed to the hospital, Basbas added.

Elements of Zamboanga del Sur Provincial Police Office are now investigating the robbery, as of this posting, and a pursuit operation has been launched against the perpetrators who fled towards the town of Labangan.

Windel Castillo, who happened to be inside the mall, informed the Philippine Daily Inquirer that people panicked when the armed men entered the pawnshop.

“The ML Lhuillier branch here is a big showroom with kiosk and there were jewelry on display. One of their guards was killed,” Castillo said.

But Basbas said he still has to receive a report that a security guard was killed.