Smash-and-grab thieves targeted a jewelry store in the Bella Terra shopping center on Sunday, May 22, police said, panicking workers and shoppers in the third such theft at an Orange County mall in the past two months.
The heist took place at about noon at Princess Bride Diamonds, 7821 Edinger Ave., Huntington Beach Police spokeswoman Jennifer Carey said.
The thieves pulled into the outdoor mall’s parking lot in a Honda, said an employee at a nearby store who declined to give his name for safety reasons. He said he saw three or four people wearing ski masks and carrying hammers get out of the car. One of them was carrying a backpack with a camouflage print.
“As soon as I saw them get out of the car, I knew they were going to rob Princess Bride,” he said.
They came and went, he said, in under a minute.
Justin Lowrie said he was in a garden near the jewelry store when he and several others heard the sound of glass being smashed.
“Some of us ran, thinking the glass breaking was gunshots,” he said.
Brian Lam was working at SomiSomi, an ice cream shop next to the jewelry store, when the theft took place. He said heard three loud noises, and then saw one person wearing something covering his face running south toward the parking lot.
Lam later peeked inside Princess Bride Diamonds, and saw at least two display glass display cases had been shattered.
Several Princess Bride employees were present at the time of the incident, Carey said. Nobody was hurt, according to a woman who answered the phone at the jewelry store on Sunday afternoon.
A description of what was taken was not immediately available.
Last month, at least two other Orange County jewelry stores were hit with smash-and-grab thefts. Thieves used hammers to break open glass display cases at Kay Jewelers in the Westminster Mall on April 4, and another branch of that store at the Brea Mall on April 15. About $200,000 worth of merchandise was taken in each of those heists.
As of mid-April, there were at least 35 smash-and-grab jewelry store robberies in California since May of 2021 — a number disproportionate to other states, said John Kennedy, president of the Jewelers’ Security Alliance, an industry nonprofit organization.
It’s not that California is a larger state, he said. He attributed the robberies to gangs.
“That’s way off the charts of being unusual,” he said. “It scares people in the industry.”
This is a developing story. More information will be added when it becomes available.
Source: Orange County Register
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