Ex-cook steals P700,000 from hospital canteen

Not even a shirt pulled up to his face could conceal the identity of a man, believed to be a recently axed worker of a canteen at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) in Quezon City, who allegedly stole on Monday night around P700,000 in cash from his former boss.

The robbery suspect even went to the extent of covering with pieces of paper and plastic the lenses of all the closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at Yam Cha Express, one of the canteens at the hospital, although his actions were still captured on video and he was easily identified by his former coworkers.

SPO1 Pascual Fabreag of the Quezon City Police District’s  Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit said that based on the footage taken by one of the CCTV cameras, the break-in happened at 10 p.m., an hour after the canteen had closed for the day.

It showed a man entering the canteen with his shirt pulled up to conceal half of his face. He went to the security cameras, covered up their lenses, destroyed a vault and a locked cabinet which contained around P700,000 in cash and then climbed out of a window.

According to a report of the Kamuning police station, the burglary was discovered at 6 a.m. Tuesday by supervisor Mildred Tiu after she reported for work.

Fabreag did not identify the robbery suspect to avoid jeopardizing follow-up operations although he said the man was a cook who was dismissed just two weeks ago.