Cebu radio station facilitates surrender of truck driver who stole P400K from his company

Truck driver Arnold Solon, 29, narrates to dyHP-RMN Cebu station manager and CDN Digital columnist Lawyer Ruphil Bañoc how the former stole P400,000 from the vault of the company he worked for in an interview on Oct. 18, 2019. |Futch Anthony Inso

CEBU CITY, Philippines — While full of regrets for succumbing to a moment of weakness, 29-year-old Arnold Solon has accepted that he will be spending several years in jail for stealing bundles of cash of the company he worked for.

Solon, a temporary resident of Barangay Paknaan, Mandaue City, was the suspect in an arson with robbery case, after he took P400,000 in cash from the warehouse of the company located in Barangay Banilad, Mandaue City, where he worked as a truck driver.

Although Solon admitted to the crime of robbery, he denied the allegation that he intentionally started the fire inside the warehouse last Tuesday, October 15, 2019.

“Short circuit to Sir. Wala gyud to nako tuyua pag sunog (It was caused by a short circuit. I had no intention to start a fire),” Solon said, adding that he would not have started a fire as it would endanger his life and that of his co-workers.

He said that when the fire incident took place, he took advantage of it by taking the money inside the vault in their office.

He said he sneaked inside the office through a small window and forced open the vault that contained a bag filled with around P1.1 million in cash.

But he was afraid to get caught by the security guard who was assigned in the gate of the warehouse, so he took only P400,000 cash and buried the bag containing the rest of the money inside the warehouse premises.

“Akong gisuksok ang kwarta sa akong bulsa ug sa akong hawak, dayon nagpakaron-ingnon ko nga mopalit ug sigarilyo aron makagawas ko ug makasibat,” he said.

(I stuffed the cash in my pocket and around the waist of my pants and pretended that I was going to buy cigarettes so that I could get out and flee.)

When he fled, he revealed that authorities were already conducting an investigation inside the warehouse and that he had already been interrogated.

The bag that he buried was also recovered by the authorities.

He claimed poverty drove him to commit the crime, having also lost his house in Barangay Captain Claudio, Toledo City to a fire early this month. His wife is also set to give birth to their second child next week, he added.

But after four days of hiding, Solon got consumed by guilt and decided surrender.

His wife, Irenea, 30, also wanted him to surrender because she was afraid that authorities might hunt him down.

Irenea asked the help of dyHP-RMN Cebu, a local radio station, which turned over her husband to the authorities, through its station manager, Lawyer Ruphil Bañoc, who is also a columnist of CDN Digital.

Prior to his surrender, Solon hid in the house of his sister in a mountain barangay of San Fernando town in southern Cebu

DYHP fetch Solon in San Fernando and turned him over to the Casuntingan Police Station in Mandaue City.

Solon also turned over to the police P227,000, the amount left from the P400,000 that he took.

Solon claimed he went on a spending spree after he got the money, using up a total of P173,000 before he gave himself up.  He did not say where the money went or how he spent it in the four days that he was in hiding.

Solon said what he regretted most is that he will not be able to witness the birth of his second child.

He added he only hoped that with his admission of the crime and in surrendering voluntarily, this might help in reducing his sentence./elb