Robbers took advantage of the recent four-day weekend to dig a tunnel leading to a pawnshop in Manila where they made off with more than P500,000 in cash and jewelry.
The police later learned that the burglars—two men and a woman—had rented a commercial stall four houses away from the Sangalang Pawnshop on Old Sta. Mesa Street in Sta. Mesa, from where they dug a hole leading to the underground sewerage system.
From there, they made their way to the part of the sewer directly beneath the pawnshop where they dug a hole which took them to the room where the vault was kept.
Senior Police Officer 1 Carlos Garcia of the Manila Police District theft and robbery section said the robbery was discovered at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday when an employee of the establishment reported for work after the long weekend holiday.
When Geraldine Tayag came in, she found everything inside the pawnshop in disarray. In addition, there was a hole big enough for a person to crawl through in the room where they kept the vault.
A check of the vault showed that it had been emptied of its contents totaling P500,000 worth of jewelry and P25,000 in cash.
Garcia told the Inquirer that when his men got into the hole to find out where it led to, they ended up inside the commercial stall owned by Norman de Guzman, which was four houses away.
Inside the stall, they found acetylene and oxygen tanks, a crow bar, a bolt cutter and a heavy steel pole.
Garcia said that De Guzman told them that three people leased the stall from him on October 13 for P30,000. He added that his tenants informed him that they planned to open a rice store.
Several weeks before the burglary, residents in the area said they heard banging noises inside the stall but they could not see what was happening because the lights were out and the noise would suddenly stop.
“That seemed strange to them, that somebody would be doing repairs with the lights out. It was something they should have reported to the barangay (village) but they did not,” Garcia said.