Chinese couple who escaped Cavite jail recaptured

FILE PHOTO

CAMP VICENTE LIM, Laguna—A Chinese couple, convicted in a 2008 drug case, was rearrested five months after they escaped the Cavite provincial jail through the help of a robbery syndicate, police said Saturday.

Li Lan Yan, who carried the alias Jackson Dy, and his wife, Wang Li Na, were arrested by members of the Philippine National Police’s Anti-Organized Crime Division or AOCD past midnight Friday, AOCD deputy chief Superintendent Romeo Baleros told the Inquirer in a telephone interview Saturday.

The authorities traced the couple to an apartment which they had been renting since March in San Juan City, a short drive from the Philippine National Police headquarters in Camp Crame.

Police believed the couple assumed new identities as Jessie and Teresita Tan, based on the documents found in the house, and were preparing to leave the country soon.

The couple, along  with another Chinese convict, Li Tian Hua, escaped detention last February 20. Fourteen men, believed to be members of the notorious Ozamis robbery gang, snatched the convicts from jail guards, who were supposed to bring them to a court hearing in Cavite that day.

The couple told the police that Li Tian Hua already left the country but Baleros said they would have to verify this with the Bureau of Immigration.

One of the vehicles used in the escape was eventually traced to Ozamis City but police intelligence information showed the Chinese couple was taken to Taguig City before they transferred to San Juan, Baleros said.

“Every now and then, the wife who was the chemist, would leave the house (in San Juan) to go to different locations for drug manufacturing,” Baleros said. He did not give the locations, however.

Baleros, who was deputy police director in Cavite until July, said they noticed a drop in the street market price of shabu after the Chinese escaped, indicating an increase in the supply of the illegal drug in the Southern Tagalog region.

“When they were still in jail, the price of shabu was around P17,000 per ‘bulto’ (or a pack of five grams). It went down to around P11,000 when they had gotten out,” he said.

The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, under Chief Superintendent Francisco Uyami Jr. which has supervision over the AOCD, plans to ask the court for the custody of the Chinese couple, “after the jail security (in Cavite) proved to be very lax,” Baleros added.

The two are detained at an AOCD facility in Camp Crame.