MANILA, Philippines—The Caloocan City police arrested early Saturday four teenagers who allegedly broke into a bank by boring a hole on its roof but failed to cart away computer monitors worth at least P20,000 they had stolen because the alarm sounded, police said.
Police Officer 2 Mark Andrew Bartolome, one of the responding officers, told the Inquirer that the boys—two aged 14 and two aged 15—gained access to the RCBC bank on Susano Road in Camarin after cutting a hole on the bank’s roof with a knife past midnight Friday.
“They have small bodies so it was fairly easy for them to fit in the hole,” Bartolome said.
Although the minors managed to bring to the roof three of the bank’s LCD monitors, Bartolome said, they had not brought them down by the time the burglary was detected.
“So when we got to the scene when the bank alarm went off, we saw the LCD monitors up there,” he said.
One of the 14-year-olds, Bartolome said, was found hiding in a grassy area near the bank and led the police to his accomplices, who were caught nearby in possession of a Lenovo laptop computer, also taken from the bank.
The four boys have been turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Bartolome said the police were looking into the possibility that the boys had been used by a bigger syndicate.