Truck yields 3 dead men in Taguig

Their job that day was simple: Pick up a cargo of scrap metal and deliver some appliances.

But the three men working for a trucking company in Tondo, Manila, ended up dead in Taguig City, their bullet-riddled bodies found Friday night inside their own delivery truck.

The police are looking at the possibility that the truck was hijacked before the three men were brutally killed. The 20-foot container truck was empty of cargo when found parked on Sta. Ana Drive, Barangay Bagumbayan.

The victims were Reynaldo Cabalan, 49, the driver from Del Pan Street, Tondo, and his helpers Rojin Mesias from Bustos, Bulacan province, and a man identified only as Jason.

Their hogtied bodies were discovered around 8:30 p.m. by Christopher Navarro, son of the truck owner and dispatcher of MECC Trading.

Supt. Celso Rodriguez, deputy chief for operations of the Taguig police, said Navarro went out looking for the three men and the truck after they failed to return from an assignment earlier that day.

Cabalan and his helpers were supposed to pick up scrap metal from a shop on Antonio Drive, also in Bagumbayan,

“It’s possible that the victims knew the perpetrators. Why bring the victims there? It seems that whoever did this knew where the victims were headed,” Rodriguez said. “The truck was also reportedly carrying appliances. There was supposed to be cargo.”