Scavengers face more questioning
MANDAUE City police will again invite for questioning scavengers who recently found pieces of jewelry at the Umapad dumpsite.
Insp. Ramil Morpos, Theft and Robbery Section (TRS) chief, said they invited the scavengers after they received reports from the family of the owner, Vicente Tan, that they lost more jewelry items than what was reported and recovered.
The Tan family, who made an inventory of valuables over the weekend, claimed that there were more missing jewelry and important documents such as a bankbook and lot titles.
The three scavengers Rodrigo Corta, Eva Montecalvo and Antonio Quezon were requested to be at the Investigation and Detection Management Branch (IDMB) today.
“We need to ask and investigate them again if they have kept or already sold other jewelry items that are not disclosed,” Morpos said.
“The jewelry were found last Jan. 12 but we questioned them and we recovered the jewelry on the 16th. Maybe, they had sold some of jewelry items,” Morpos said in Cebuano.
But scavenger Corta said he and his family could hardly believe there were still other jewelry that were found by other scavengers.
“When we found the jewelry items, Ida, Tony and I and the other scavengers continued searching but we found nothing,” said Corta.
He said he wasn’t sure about the lost land titles and bankbook because they were focusing on the search for jewelry items.
“If the land titles and the bankbook were there, then it would have been damaged as it was already dumped with other garbage,” he said.
Yesterday, police also appealed to those who bought some of the pieces of jewelry to voluntarily turn them over to the police or to Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes.
Police said that if they would be found out that they bought the jewelry and had not turned it over, then a case might be filed against them.
However, Tan’s lawyer, Inocencio dela Cerna, already assured that the owner’s family wouldn’t file a case against anybody who would return the jewelry.
Dela Cerna said the family would even give a cash reward for those who would return the jewelry.
The Tan family made an inventory of their valuables over the weekend when they checked Tan’s room.
Last Jan. 12, scavengers of the Umapad dumpsite in Mandaue City recovered gold and diamond jewelry.
Some of the items were sold or pawned.
Two men’s gold bracelets and two rings, including Tan’s graduation class ring, were turned over for safekeeping to Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes, who is required under the Civil Code to publicize the lost-and-found items for two weeks.
The mayor told the Tan family to wait until Feb. 3 for other claimants to surface./Correspondent Fe Marie Dumaboc with a report from Correspondent Norman V. Mendoza
