Motorbike thief says ex-‘kagawad’ was his ‘mentor’

A THEFT suspect arrested by the Caloocan City police Tuesday morning pointed to a former barangay councilor or kagawad as his “mentor” when it came to stealing motorcycles.

Police said Elmer Montilla, 37, was caught on security camera while stealing a bike on Oct. 13 on Bustamante Street, Barangay 43.

He was tagged as a member of the Marko Carlos group believed to be behind a spate of motorcycle thefts in Caloocan and neighboring cities.

When the Inquirer found him in detention, Montilla admitted stealing five bikes since July and pointed to Carlos—a former barangay councilor in General Luna, Caloocan—as the one who taught him how to use a three-inch lock pick to steal a bike.

The Caloocan police chief, Senior Supt. Bartolome Bustamante, confirmed that the 27-year-old Carlos was a former village official and that he was also arrested on Oct. 22 for an earlier theft. Carlos managed to post bail later, the official added.

Insp. Cecilio Tomas Jr., the leader of the team who arrested Montilla, identified the other gang members as Gilbert Manansala, Tristan Wong and Parrish Santos. Of the three, only Santos remains at large.

Wong, a mechanic, was the one tasked to make a duplicate key for a stolen motorcycle before the unit could be sold, Tomas said. The group also interchanged the major parts of stolen bikes to make them more difficult to trace, he added.

According to Montilla, Carlos paid him P3,000 to P4,000 to do a specific job: to steal Yamaha Mio motorcycles.

Bustamante said five to six motorcycles are stolen in Caloocan each week. Among them was a Yamaha Mio by a local policeman who last parked it in the wee hours of Oct. 7 at his own station.