Greenbelt 5 Rolex Store Robbery Incident

Greenbelt 5 Rolex Store Robbery Incident

Every time there is an upcoming election, It seems like there is an increase in store robbery, Kidnap for ransom, and bank robberies. The recent one is the Rolex store holdup in Greenbelt 5 Makati.

According to news reports, about 6 men got off a van near the Greenbelt 5 wearing bonnets and bomb squad uniforms. Armed with high caliber rifles and grenade launchers, they told the guard they were checking a call about a bomb in the building.

I guess from the point of view of the guards, it may not seem a threat at that time since these guys were in bomb squad uniforms.

The robbers proceed to the Rolex store to carry out their attack. Stephanie Shier, a manager of a nearby clothing store said.

“We just saw some armed men they were wearing Bomb Squad uniforms…and they started hammering the showcases. And from there, I and some customers went inside the stockroom and afterward we heard gunshots for about five minutes”

Fortunately Taguig Mayor Tinga was having lunch with some relatives in a restaurant nearby. Accompanying him are some body guards and two Taguig policemen namely PO1 Efren Ceniza Jr. and SPO1 Cesar Tiglao, who was there mainly to secure the area.

These two brave policemen chanced upon the robbers smashing the store windows/glass watch display and concluded that such behavior will not be done by a “true” policeman. A gunbattle between the two policemen who were just carrying small sidearms and the heavily armed robbers. They were outgunned and outnumbered but they were able to neutralize one of the robbers.

It seems that the robbers really planned it well including the timing and everything. They solved their entry by using fake bombsquad uniforms, they chose Sunday because there is less traffic on Sunday’s, and they chose to target a high end watch store because they can get millions worth of loot with just one “operation”.

What they failed to consider is the highly improbably chance that some Mayor with policemen were there. It was just a chance encounter.