Stolen SUV found in QC; 4 car thieves arrested

Four men forcibly took a sport utility vehicle from its owner in Mandaluyong City on Sunday night.

However, the black Toyota Fortuner with plate number ZLA 736 was recovered Monday morning in Quezon City and the four men were taken into custody, Mandaluyong police chief Senior Superintendent Armando Bolalin told the Inquirer.

“The suspects, who were on board an Innova, passed through a checkpoint at La Loma [but the police were suspicious of them] and checked the vehicle’s plate number. [They] found that it didn’t match the Innova they were using. All four were therefore taken into custody,” Bolalin said.

Bolalin added that when questioned, the four men led the police to where they had taken the Fortuner.

The vehicle was taken from Anthony de Vera, a resident of Barangay (village) Old Zañiga in Mandaluyong City at around 11:30 p.m. on Sunday.

“The owner had just gotten off the vehicle when two of the four men approached him. One of them hit him with a gun [on] the back of the head [while] the other pointed another gun at him,” Bolalin said.

The remaining two men, on the other hand, served as lookouts.

“Everything happened so fast the owner did not have time to react,” Bolalin said.

According to him, the Quezon City police were trying to establish the identities of the four men taken into custody.

Meanwhile, the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) is looking into the possibility that the Marteja-Briones gang was behind Friday’s carjacking of a Pasay judge’s sport utility vehicle and the killing of her driver.

The group is notorious for stealing high-end SUVs, particularly Mitsubishi Monteros, according to an official of the QCPD anticar theft unit.

Inspector Rogelio Diaz, chief investigator, said they learned that some members of the gang were able to post bail two weeks ago.

Marlon Quiocho, 33, was shot dead when he fought off two men who tried to steal the Mitsubishi Montero (NGP 591) of his employer, Pasay City Judge Racquelen Vasquez, in front of her house in Barangay Tandang Sora, Quezon City.

In a related development, a police official said that they do not object to a crime watchdog’s efforts to form a vigilante group against car thieves so long as they do not take the law into their hands.

Supt. Edwin Butacan, Highway Patrol Group spokesman, said that they see the creation of a citizens’ anticar theft group as a “good development” that would complement their own efforts.

“We have been talking about that [with] our lawyers and we have no problem with it, regardless [of] what name they adopt, so long as their actions are within the bounds of law. They should not take the law into their hands,” Butacan said.

The other day, the Volunteers against Crime announced the formation of a vigilante group against car thieves in view of what it said was the government’s weak response to the rise in car theft cases—With Dona Z. Pazzibugan