BUSTED. Motorcycle-for-hire (habal-habal) driver Mads Luminog Mamintal hides his face following his arrest during a Thursday (Dec. 13) drug buy-bust in Cotabato City. (Photo courtesy of PDEA-ARMM).
COTABATO CITY--Anti-narcotic agents, backed by policemen, arrested here shortly before noon Thursday a “habal-habal” (motorcycle-for-hire) driver found carrying PHP6.8-million worth of suspected "shabu".
Chief Supt. Eliseo Rasco, director of Police Regional Office -12 (Soccsksargen), identified the arrested suspect as Mads Luminog Mamintal, 43, of Barangay Rosary Heights 7, this city.
Mamintal's companion, identified only as Abdul, managed to escape and is now the object of a manhunt operation, Rasco said in a statement released Thursday.
Members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PDEA-ARMM) and personnel of the Regional Police Drug Enforcement Unit and Cotabato City Police Office pounced on Mamintal after an exchange with a poseur-buyer around 11 a.m. at a garments trading center here.
Seized from him were 20 big packs of shabu weighing a total of one kilo, his motorbike, a mobile phone, marked money made of fake bundles of PHP1,000 bills, and a multi-cab vehicle driven by the accomplice.
Juvenal Azurin, PDEA-ARMM chief, described Mamintal as “very elusive.”
“Many drug buy-bust plans for him failed in the past because the suspect was always suspicious of the buyer so he always changes trade-off areas,” Azurin added in vernacular.
Abdul managed to escape despite warning shots from law enforcers, the PDEA official said.
When asked by reporters, Mamintal denied the accusations against him.
“That is not mine, I was only used as a guide in their transaction,” Mamintal said in vernacular.
The suspect was detained at the PDEA-ARMM lock-up cell in this city pending charges against him for violation of RA 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. (PNA)
