Family of pot packers caught in Caloocan
The family that “packs” together …
A couple and their two children were among the eight people arrested in Caloocan City Thursday night for being into an unusual home-based enterprise: Packing marijuana.
The Northern Police District identified the suspects as 63-year-old mason Rodito Arabia, his 49-year-old wife Rosalie, and their children: Joseph, 27; and Rochelle, 25. The family resides in Purok 1 of Vanguard, Camarin.
The four others were Cindy Periano, 26; and Marivic Labatoy, 35, who both lived with Arabias; and Bernie Grande, 30; and Ernesto Vicio, 30.
In a report by Chief Insp. Ronald Perilla, head of the NPD’s Special Operations Unit, the suspects’ activities were discovered by the police by accident.
It all started around 11 p.m. in Vanguard where a Caloocan police team spotted and tried to accost a man carrying an improvised shotgun in the street. The man then ran off and a chase ensued.
The man went into the Arabias’ house, where the police later caught the family and the other suspects in the act of packing blocks of dried marijuana into small sachets. Because of the resulting commotion, it was not immediately established who among the arrested men was the one earlier seen with the weapon.
Investigators later learned that the marijuana was sold by the suspects themselves to users in the neighborhood.
Seized from the suspects were the improvised shotgun, three sachets containing a substance suspected to be “shabu,” and the marijuana blocks whose exact volume was not yet known when Perilla made the report.
Woman with P1.5-M ‘shabu’
Meanwhile, in Quezon City, a woman who was initially arrested for causing a disturbance early Friday turned out to be carrying about P1.5 million worth shabu in her bag.
Still “stoned” when brought to the police station, Jody Daranciang, 30, later confessed to being both a drug user and a pusher, according to Senior Insp. Roberto Razon, chief of the Quezon City Police District’s anti-illegal drugs unit.
Found inside her bag were eight plastic sachets containing a total of 670 grams of shabu, which Razon said would fetch P 1.5 million in the streets.
“The woman said she sells shabu but she couldn’t say where, since she was so stoned when arrested and could not talk straight,” he said.
Also recovered from Daranciang was a notebook believed to be containing a list possibly of her drug clients, the officer added. “We are still verifying the list but we have information that she gets the drugs from Chinese suppliers.”
A resident of Barangay Bagong Pagasa, the woman was arrested around 7:30 a.m Friday in nearby Barangay Sto. Cristo, where she was seen shouting invectives and apparently trying to pick a fight with a passerby on Palawan Street.
Alarmed residents called for the police as they suspected Daranciang to be high on drugs.
