BCPO warns taxi drivers vs. robbery schemes

By Glazyl M. Jopson

BACOLOD CITY — Police Col. Eugene Rebadomia, officer in charge of the Bacolod City Police Office, is urging taxi drivers to remain vigilant after a 60-year-old driver was robbed by a passenger who also took his vehicle in front of a spa in Barangay 7 on Tuesday night.

Police Maj. Eugene Tolentino, head of Police Station 2, said an unidentified man boarded the taxi from a hotel along Lacson Street to a hardware store in Barangay 5 at around 8:30 p.m.

The passenger then asked the driver to stop by a spa and requested that he deliver a laptop to a certain person inside the establishment.

When the driver went inside, the receptionist told him that the person he was looking for did not work there.

He immediately went out of the building and discovered that his passenger had already taken the taxi.

The taxi driver reported the incident to the police, who then alerted all police stations and conducted patrols until they tracked down the vehicle in a residential village in Barangay Mandalagan at around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Authorities found the victim’s taxi abandoned in the area, with his cellular phone and an undetermined amount of cash missing.

Tolentino said police initially considered the case a “salisi” incident, but because the suspect used the vehicle as a getaway car, they are also investigating it as a carnapping case.

On March 2, a robbery suspect was killed after he allegedly resisted arrest, while his companion was arrested in a hot pursuit operation following a taxi hold-up incident in Barangay 40 here.

In Wednesday’s media briefing, Rebadomia advised taxi drivers to be careful because criminal elements may create scenarios to commit crimes due to poverty.

“They should never get deceived,” he said.