TACLOBAN CITY—Police have released more than 100 suspects in the massive looting of establishments here hours after the city was hit by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” after no charges have been filed against the suspects.
Some of the arrested suspects were minors who had been released immediately, according to SPO4 Ignacio Amescua, chief investigator of the city police.
Amescua said the arrests were made after police went around the city in search of looters and stolen items.
Suspects who are of legal age and found to have possessed stolen items have been detained and the goods seized, said Amescua.
The arrested suspects, however, had to be released because police were allowed to detain them for only 18 hours without charges. However, no one came forward to file the charges, according to Amescua.
“It should be the owners of the stolen items who should file the complaints,” he said.
The seized items include clothes, cable wires, bottles of liquor, bed foams and appliances. They are being kept at the city police office.
Just hours after Yolanda struck, looters ransacked malls, stores, warehouses and other establishments in the city, taking food, clothes and appliances.
An overseas Filipino worker from this city who lost his belongings to Yolanda admitted to the Inquirer that he took part in the looting. He said he took electric fans, a cabinet and traveling bags, which he said he would use for his return to Saudi Arabia, where he works.
Among the establishments looted were the shopping malls Robinson’s Place Tacloban, Gaisano Capital and the newly opened Metro Savers Tacloban.
Metro Savers Tacloban had opened in a soft launch and was supposed to be opened formally on Nov. 9, the day it was looted.
Several establishments owned by foreigners have also been ransacked. One Taiwanese who owned a small mall in the city estimated his losses to be at least P50 million.
He said he understood why people panicked in search of food but he could not understand why people had to steal appliances.
The looting prompted authorities to impose a curfew, which is still in effect until today.
Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez, speaking through his administrator, Tecson John Lim, has condemned the looting.
Henry Cua, head of the Leyte Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said he understood why the looting took place. “Our people were hungry,” he said. The stealing of nonfood items, he said, was “incidental.”