Witness tags carjack gangs ‘godfather’

A Visayas-based lending firm official Wednesday tagged the so-called “godfather” of car theft gangs in the country as the source of a van which later turned out to have been taken forcibly from its owner who was killed by the carjackers.

Norman Kho of NKB Lending Corp. testified in court Wednesday that in 2009, he and Jovel Entote agreed to swap vehicles. In exchange for his Lexus, Entote gave him a Toyota Grandia, he told Judge Eleuterio Bathan of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 92.

He said it was only after he was accosted at a checkpoint while driving the van that he learned that it was a stolen vehicle.

Entote, tagged by the police as the godfather of carjacking syndicates, is facing charges of car theft with homicide in connection with the death of Rodolfo Petalino, the Grandia’s original owner.

Court records showed that Petalino was driving the van (ZDZ 463) on Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City on April 9, 2009, when Entote and another man tried to take it from him.

When the victim resisted, they shot him dead. Later that year, the Grandia, then worth P1.79 million, ended up with Kho but with a different license plate (NKB 111). It was recovered by authorities in Bacolod City last October.

In August, Entote was arrested in Cebu City by virtue of an arrest warrant issued by Bathan.

According to the police, he  used his car trading business in Cebu province to sell stolen vehicles in Visayas and Mindanao.