Robbery group falls, thanks to stolen phone’s GPS

Four motorbike-riding robbery suspects were arrested by the Quezon City police on Tuesday, thanks to a GPS (global positioning system) tracker installed in one of the cell phones they stole.

The group was cornered in a rented house in Bulacan province after pulling off a series of robberies in Quezon City and Caloocan in a span of two hours, according to the Quezon City Police District (QCPD).

The suspects were identified as John Asuncion, 33; Roel Mendoza, 26; Jace Solis, 24, and Joven Sabalza, 19.

Also detained was Solis’ aunt, Annie Bautista, who was caught wearing a watch also allegedly stolen by the group.

Eatery, car wash shops hit

The QCPD said the four men first victimized the people at a home-based eatery in Barangay 164, Caloocan.

In an Inquirer interview, the homeowner, who was six months pregnant, said one of the robbers pointed a gun at her belly and her young children.

The suspects then went to neighboring Quezon City and found victims at two carwash shops in Barangay Talipapa, first on Mindanao Avenue and then later at the corner of Quirino Highway and Kalapati Street.

They took phones, valuables and cash amounting to over P240,000, said QCPD director, Chief Supt. Guillermo Eleazar.

1 more victim

Before ending their crime spree, they robbed another man, taking his motorbike as he was waiting in front of a bakery on General Avenue in Tandang Sora.

But unfortunately for the suspects, one of the phones they took at the Quirino Highway carwash had a mobile app with a GPS tracker.

Tracked down in Marilao

“I immediately went home to check my phone’s location with my partner’s phone,” the phone’s owner told the Inquirer, adding that the app enabled him see the device moving in Project 8 and heading to Muñoz.

The tracker led members of the QCPD’s Talipapa station and the Bulacan police to a house inside North Ville Subdivision in Barangay Lambakin, Marilao, where the suspects were later arrested.

Aside from the stolen items, also seized from the suspects were three loaded handguns, a gun replica and the two motorbikes used in the robberies.

Supt. Danilo Mendoza, Talipapa police station commander, said information from the Northern Police District pointed to the four men as the same group behind a carwash robbery in Caloocan on March 26.