Police ask for help in going after car theft gang leader

ERNESTO GUTIERREZ. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY MPD

The police have asked the public for help in going after the alleged leader of a notorious car theft group in Metro Manila.

Ernesto Gutierrez Jr., a resident of Tondo, Manila, who is also known as JR Bait, has been linked by the Manila Police District (MPD) to the theft of several motorcycles and luxury vehicles in the metropolis.

In Manila alone, he is believed to be responsible for at least five car theft cases although his gang also reportedly operates in Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog, MPD anticar theft unit chief Inspector Joie Pacito Yape Jr. said.

Yape said that although Gutierrez had been arrested several times, he has always managed to get out of jail because of his connections with police and government officials.

Yape refused, however, to identify some of the car theft suspect’s protectors.

“It is usually dismissed, AWOL [absent without official leave] or scalawag policemen who work with him. They’re the ones who buy the vehicles and sell them,” Yape told the Inquirer Sunday.

Aside from having been positively identified by some of his victims, Gutierrez has also been implicated by a member of his gang who was recently arrested—James Bryan Dean, alias “JB Demonyo.”

Dean was arrested by the MPD for killing a housemaid and injuring three civilians in a shooting rampage in Tondo on July 22.

Dean, who was picked up as he was being treated at a hospital, claimed that he was being shot at by Gutierrez and other gang members and that he only fired back.

Dean said that Gutierrez wanted to kill him because he was being accused of stealing some of the motorcycles the gang took.

Dean added that he was tasked to sell the engines of the motorcycles stolen by the gang.

According to him, Gutierrez, aside from being a car thief, was also a gun for hire.

“We can’t do this alone. We need the support of the community [in going after Gutierrez],” Yape said.