The anti-carnapping unit of the Quezon City Police District arrested a middle-age man and his 16-year-old right-hand boy for a series of tricycle thefts in Quezon City.

Supt. Ferdinand Villanueva, head of the District Anti-Carnapping Unit of the QCPD, said the suspects’ modus operandi was to scout for tricycles with defective engines and when the elder suspect found them, the teenager would steal motorcycles of the same make.

Once the motorcycle had been stolen, they would then peddle it to the owner of the tricycle with a defective engine.

The police official said Edmundo Callueng and the boy have undergone inquest proceedings for carnapping cases.

Six units of Kawasaki motorcycles whose vital parts came from tricycles were reportedly recovered from the suspects.

According to Villanueva, it was the 16-year-old boy who was first apprehended in Antipolo City last September 3.

The teenager was then the one who pointed to Callueng in a follow-up operation also in Antipolo City.

Three days of follow-up operations also resulted in the recovery of six tricycles whose owners claimed to have bought engines of Kawasaki Barako 175cc from Callueng.

Villanueva said the cases of motorcycle theft in the Barangays Batasan and Holy Spirit and other parts of Cubao, Quezon, were believed to have been perpetrated by the suspects, at least two suspected cohorts of whom are still at large.