ILIGAN CITY — The five men who fought police officers in a checkpoint in Libertad, Misamis Oriental last week belonged to a notorious criminal syndicate, a top regional police official said.
Brigadier General Rolando Anduyan, Region 10 police director, said they will only identify the crime group once pursuit operations have been done, although he described the syndicate as mainly involved in robbery and gun-for-hire activities.
Four of the five men were now dead, leaving one as the subject of a continuing pursuit.
The men’s leader, identified by police only as alias Bulaw, who carried a hand grenade, was killed Friday after refusing to give himself up.
Bulaw was tagged as leader based on the accounts of his two companions who were also killed last Friday while being transported to the provincial jail in Cagayan de Oro from Libertad town, as both allegedly attempted to grab service firearms of their police escorts.
Cops from the police’s Regional Intelligence Battalion (RIB) were escorting them in other vehicles.
Velarde said the convoy stopped when a police mobile had engine failure.
Perez and Abellana reportedly had asked to relieve themselves hence their handcuffs were taken off. It gave the two the chance to grab the firearms of their police escorts, leading to a scuffle, Velarde related.
Amid the commotion, escorts aboard another vehicle got off and fired at the two suspects, Velarde added, citing an incident report.
All three dead suspects were among five persons aboard a sedan that carried a cache of firearms and ammunitions on Feb. 17. When it was flagged down in a Libertad checkpoint that evening, their driver got off and stood before the cops.
However, four of them got out and exchanged gunfires with policemen before running to escape.
Their driver, Jephone Tinamisan, was killed. A cop, Staff Sergeant Ronald Caayupan, also died, while a colleague, Chief Master Sergeant Fernando Maestrado, was wounded.
In the next two days, Perez, a resident of Lapu-lapu City, and Abellana, a resident of Tangub City, were caught.