Four male suspects robbed the Don Roberto’s Jewelry Store located at 1619 West 17th Street at 1:09 p.m. today, and were able to escape with perhaps as much as $17,000 worth of jewelry, according to the SAPD.
Fortunately the SAPD was later able to track down and arrest three of the suspects after they stopped a vehicle that the robbers were in. The fourth suspect is still on the lam.
The store’s workers did not let the robbers into the store, so the thieves instead turned their attention to the window display cases, smashing them and taking the contents.
A similar robbery happened earlier in the day on Sunday at about noon at Princess Bride Diamonds, a jewelry store in the Bella Terra shopping center in Huntington Beach.
The suspects parked at the jewelry store’s parking lot, at an outdoor mall, in a Honda, according to a witness. That witness also saw three or four people wearing ski masks and carrying hammers get of the car. One of the suspects was also holding a backpack with a camouflage print design.
The suspects tried to ransack the store but two store employees rushed the suspects and fought them, even knocking one of the suspects to the ground. Another worker struck a suspect with a chair during the fracas.
You can see the video of the fight online on the store’s Instagram account. The Instagram post notes “We fought back and are ok.” Fortunately they were not able to get anything thanks to our awesome team.”
Two other Orange County jewelry stores were hit with smash-and-grabs last month. Thieves used hammers to break open glass display cases at the Kay Jewelers in the Westminster Mall on April 4, and another branch of Kay Jewelers at the Brea Mall on April 15. About $200,000 worth of merchandise was taken in each of those robberies. There were at least 35 smash-and-grab jewelry store robberies in California since May of 2021 as of mid-April. Gangs are suspected to be involved in these attacks.
