Cops Nab Ex-robbery Convict with PHP11.8M Shabu

Cebu City police inteligence branch operatives Saturday arrested a man who has served time for conviction in robbery and seized from him a pack of one kilo of shabu worth PHP11.8 million on Tres de Abril St., Barangay Labangon, Cebu City.

The Dangerous Drugs Board set the value of shabu at PHP11,800 per gram.

Superintendet Romeo Santander, chief of the City Intelligence Branch (CIB) of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), said Genes Joven Ermitanio, 20, tried to run away from a mignight transaction with an undercover policeman, but police officers managed to trap him on the other side of the road.

Santander said Ermitanio had been elusive for the last two months, changing his meeting place with a client in every transaction.

“We never thought the drug would become bigger in this transaction. It’s too much,” Santander said.

Ermitanio, who turned 20 Sunday, said he was trying to raise money for his birthday but spent his time in a jail cell instead.

Ermitanio was convicted for robbery in 2013 after an anti-robbery police team had arrested him after he was found to be a member of a motorbike-riding robbery group operating in Barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City.

It was the second largest amount of shabu confiscated in Cebu this year, following the seizure of PHP24 million worth of the drug from a woman in San Remigio in northern Cebu last May.

Santander said charges for violation of the Dangerous Drugs Act are being against Ermitanio for filing in court on Monday. (PNA) CTB/EB/PJN