Cabinet not best hiding place for suspect

5 held for stealing truck loaded with bottled drinks

IT PROBABLY works during a game of hide and seek, but Richard Udan thought wrong this time.

“His family said he was not home but we found him hiding inside a cabinet,” said Senior Insp. Rosalino Ibay, head of the Manila Police District’s (MPD) anticar theft unit, referring to a suspect arrested over the weekend.

Udan, a 38-year-old truck driver, was one of the five men captured by the MPD in connection with the robbery of a delivery truck carrying P270,000 worth of bottled drinks late last week.

Ibay identified the other suspects as Erwin Duran, 36; Delfin Hifarva, 59; Samuel Angcon, 19, and Arjay Almadra, 24.

The officer said his team received a complaint on Friday from Macs Link Special Services, a distributor of Coca-Cola products, claiming that Udan made off with a red Mitsubishi delivery truck (NRI 649) around 6 a.m.

The truck was later found by the police around 2 p.m. the same day on Macapagal Avenue, Pasay City, but half of its cargo was already gone.

A manhunt for Udan led to his house in Bagong Silang, Caloocan City, at 11:30 p.m., where he was discovered hiding in a cabinet.

Udan then led the police to his cohort, truck helper Erwin Duran, who was arrested 5 a.m. Saturday in his home in Pandacan, Manila.

Duran allegedly helped in selling the stolen drinks.

He pointed to a grocery on FB Harrison Street, Pasay City, owned by Gloria Medina, who was not around when the police went there.

But the police arrested Medina’s live-in partner, Hifarva, and two store helpers.

The suspects from the store were charged with violation of the antifencing law, while Udan and Duran were charged with carnapping and qualified theft.

Ibay said a similar incident happened involving Macs Link Special Services on Jan. 12, and intelligence reports also pointed to the Pasay grocery as the buyer of the stolen products.