CEBU CITY – Four armed men posing as National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents robbed a pawnshop on a busy street here on Saturday morning, November 25.

TWO men take pieces of jewelry from a glass case in a robbery inside a pawnshop in Cebu City on Saturday morning, November 26. (Screengrab from CCTV footage)

Oro Pawnshop on Colon St. in Barangay Kalubihan was robbed an hour after it opened and the incident which lasted about two minutes was captured by closed-circuit television camera (CCTV).

Surveillance footage showed four armed men wearing baseball caps and face masks arriving in the pawnshop.

Two of them armed with short and long firearms stayed outside as lookouts while their cohorts barged inside.

One of them disarmed and ordered the security guard to drop to the ground.

Employees hid for safety while the robbers took pieces of jewelry from the glass case and placed them in a bag and fled on board separate motorcycles.

Nobody was able to call the police while the robbery was ongoing. Two security guards from nearby establishments were present but they did not try to stop the suspects as they had no service firearms.

The amount of stolen jewelry is yet to be determined.

A shoe repairman in front of the pawnshop said the suspects pointed a gun at him when they arrived around 9:05 a.m.

He said they identified themselves as NBI agents serving a warrant of arrest against the pawnshop's security guard.

“They were bringing long firearms. They told me to leave. I ran because I was afraid that they would shoot me. I then told pedestrians to stay away from the area because the pawnshop was being robbed,” he said.

Another witness said he heard one of the robbers shouting: “This security guard is a wanted person, don’t move!”

“They were carrying what looked like M14 firearms. They have separate firearms tucked in their waists. After the robbery, they boarded a motorcycle as if nothing happened,” the witness said.

Police Major Miles Dumoslog, chief of the Carbon Police Station, said it took time before pawnshop employees called the police.

Dumoslog said it was possible that the suspects are not from Cebu.

He said there were policemen assigned in the area but they were patrolling the opposite block during the incident.

Dumuslog said one policeman was asked to explain why he was not in his post when the robbery happened.