Robbers kill teller, 2 guards in bank van heist at UP campus

MANILA, Philippines – Six unidentified men on Monday afternoon shot dead a bank teller and two security guards in an armored van robbery outside the Philippine Veterans Bank branch at the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City. The three men were shot dead outside the UP Bahay ng Alumni, where the bank is housed, shortly before 1 p.m., the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) chief, Senior Superintendent Magtanggol Gatdula, told GMANews.TV. The robbers, in bonnets and bullet-proof vests, pounced on an armored van, with body number 3189 and plate number MDB 379, that had just arrived at the bank, which is located at the Bahay ng Alumni, in front of the Cine Adarna building of the UP Film Institute. Authorities said the guards were on their way back to the van after dropping off money to the bank when the assailants attacked. As of this posting, bank officials have not determined how much the money the robbers took, according to the chief of the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), Director Jefferson Soriano. Chief Inspector Enrico Figueroa, chief of the QCPD Theft and Robbery Division, identified the teller as Genaro Aguirre and the guards as Rene Demerey and Renato Reyes. The robbers fled aboard a blue Mitsubishi Adventure, which probers found abandoned about 500 meters from the crime scene, outside the Department of Citizens' Military Training (DCMT) compound, according to Figueroa. According to two student witnesses, the robbers then transferred to a maroon Toyota Revo, but the witnesses were not able to note down the plate number. Probers found two bottles of urine inside the abandoned Adventure, which led them to believe that the robbers had been staking out inside the van prior to the robbery. They also found one license plate number inside the van, two baseball caps, and several rounds of .30-caliber ammunition, the type used by military personnel for their M-14 or M-1 rifles. The plate number attached to the blue Adventure is WKJ 409. The other plate number (SFV 903), recovered inside the van, was used to conceal the van's real plate during the robbery incident. Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. arrived at the crime scene to inspect the armored van. According to Gatdula, the QCPD immediately dispatched lawmen to the crime scene immediately, but they were delayed for awhile because UP does not allow the regular police to enter its campus without permission from university officials. The QC police chief added that he already met with a UP official to discuss the dangers of having an open university where anyone can enter. "Kausap ko yung UP Chancellor nila. Talagang it’s a problem of the UP authorities. It’s very porous. Wala silang gate, wala silang wall sa university na ito, so anyone can enter (I talked to their chancellor. It’s really a problem of UP authorities. It’s very porous. They don’t have gates or walls so any kind of people can enter)," Gatdula said. Three decades ago, during the regime of late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, a group of militant students closed off the entire campus and formed the now famous Diliman Commune, where government officials, even the police, had been barred from entering. – Sophia Dedace and Mark Merueñas, GMANews.TV