Carjackers who killed woman new recruits, says cop

The Quezon City police are looking into the possibility that the carjackers who shot dead a woman belong to the same group which was busted by the police nearly two weeks ago.

In an interview, Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director Chief Superintendent George Regis said yesterday that the two men who shot and killed Teresa Teaño on Wednesday morning could be newly-fielded “substitute players” for five suspected car thieves who were arrested by members of the QCPD anticar theft unit in separate operations on June 11 and 12.

He added that this would explain why Teaño’s gunmen appeared to be inexperienced. “They seemed to have shot her in panic when she fought back,” Regis pointed out.

According to him, the “unexpected, unplanned” killing may have alarmed the group which is why its members decided to lie low in the days that followed as no new car theft cases were reported.

Regis said the QCPD was now “hot on the suspects’ trail” with the pursuit operations widened to areas outside Metro Manila.

In a phone interview, QCPD Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit chief Inspector Rodel Marcelo said the carjackers appeared to have taken Teaño’s car, a brand-new red Hyundai Accent without any license plates, to the provinces.

Teaño, an administrative assistant at the Land Registration Authority, was on her way to a meditation center on Kamuning Road in Quezon City when two men demanded the keys to her vehicle. When she resisted, they shot her and then ran over her body in their haste to escape.