Video shows brazen jewelry store robbery in Manhattan's Diamond District

ByEyewitness News WABC logo
Monday, August 26, 2019
Video shows brazen jewelry store robbery in Manhattan's Diamond District
Mike Marza reports on the jewelry heist in Midtown.

MIDTOWN, Manhattan (WABC) -- Police are searching for three men who robbed a jewelry store in Midtown Manhattan Sunday.

Sources say the thieves got away with millions of dollars in jewelry from safes and display cases.

Police are releasing parts of the surveillance video in their attempt to track down the robbers.

The new video shows the men in a back room of the jewelry store, the employees on the ground are blurred, and one man hands another a bag. A third man stands towards the front of the store.

It happened at noon Sunday.

Police say the three men posed as customers and were buzzed into Avianne and Company on 47th Street.

Two of them pulled out weapons and used zip ties and duct tape to tie up four employees in a back room.

Eyewitness News spoke to a friend of one of those employees.

"He's like, 'Yeah, I just got robbed this morning,'" the friend said. "He said they made the boss open up the safe. He said, 'Thank God that nobody got injured.' He said he's happy to be alive."

Investigators also sent still frames of the men on the video, who are all wearing hats, in hopes that someone will recognize them.

Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Investigators are looking at at why the store was targeted among the many in the Diamond District.

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