Ermita buy-bust: P7M shabu seized; suspected drug courier nabbed

Carlo Tude of Barangay Ermita, Cebu City is caught with more than a kilo of suspected shabu during a buy-bust operation on the evening of March 5, 2021 in the barangay. | Photo courtesy of CCPO

CEBU CITY, Philipppines — Police confiscated an estimated P7 million worth of suspected shabu and arrested a suspected illegal drugs courier during a buy-bust operation in Magallanes Street, Barangay Ermita, Cebu City on Friday, March 5, 2021.

Carlo Tude, 36, who was a former delivery driver, was caught with more than a kilo or 1,050 grams of suspected shabu during the buy-bust operation at 11:55 p.m. in Barangay Ermita, said Police Lieutenant Wilbert Parilla, deputy director for operations of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), in a phone interview on Saturday, March 6.

Parilla said that the confiscated suspected shabu had an estimated Dangerous Drugs Board value of P7,140,000.

Initial investigation showed that policemen of the City Drugs Enforcement Unit (CDEU) of the CCPO conducted the buy-bust operation after monitoring the operations of Tude for three weeks.

Parilla said that Tude was considered as a high-value target of the CCPO, who had been found out to be operating in Cebu City for over a year.

However, he said that Tude was only a drug courier and they believed that there was somebody higher than Tude who was running the drug operation.

He did not elaborate.

During the investigation, Tude also told policemen that his source of the illegal drugs or his contact on where to get the illegal drugs was inside the Cebu City Jail.

Tude named an inmate inside the city jail and police are verifying this information from the suspect.

Parilla said they were also checking when the inmate was jailed for illegal drugs.

Tude is detained at the CCPO detention cell pending the filing of illegal drug charges.

/dbs

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