About noon that day, three armed men seemingly in disguise walked into a jewelry store, hogtied employees and absconded with high-end valuables in a dramatic scene captured on surveillance video, officials said.
On Monday, the police were still searching for the robbers responsible for holding up the store, Avianne & Co., a high-profile jewelry outpost known for selling glittering, diamond-heavy pieces to celebrity clientele, including the musicians Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber.
The store, located on the bustling diamond-district block of West 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, remained closed Monday afternoon as officers surveyed the crime scene for evidence and dusted for fingerprints.
Officials did not say how many pieces were stolen or their value. Avianne’s owners and managers did not respond to requests for comment.
However, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said that the men stole numerous high-end watches and other pieces of jewelry.
The three robbers — one wearing a suit and a fedora, another donning a black bucket hat and the third sporting a red and black cloth on his head — posed as customers when they entered the store Sunday, police said.
None of the men wore masks, but two of them appeared to be wearing wigs with braids, the law enforcement official said.
The man in the fedora told store employees that he was looking to buy a ring, the official said. He and two workers then went to the store’s backroom to complete the purchase. Shortly after, at least one man in the showroom pulled out a gun.
Around the same time, the man in the fedora whipped out a silver handgun in the backroom, according to the surveillance footage from inside the store.
The other two robbers then stormed into the backroom, forced the workers to the floor and bound their limbs with duct tape and zip ties, the police said.
The surveillance footage shows two of the men shoving items into a duffle bag as employees lie on the ground. An open briefcase with luxury watches is shown sitting on a desk in the room, which is stocked with at least 10 bottles of sparkling wine and alcohol.
(Also notable in the background is a display of security cameras recording the scene, which would end up being the footage the police later released.)
The robbers fled, and the Police Department’s surveillance cameras on the street captured them trying to hail a yellow cab. None of the employees were seriously injured, the police said.
Jewelry store robberies remain prevalent across the United States, though the number of them appears to have declined in recent years, according to John J. Kennedy, the president of the Jewelers’ Security Alliance, a trade association that tracks jewelry crimes for retailers and the police.
In the first six months of 2019, the alliance tracked 59 robberies at jewelry retailers across the United States, down from 105 in the same period last year, though Kennedy noted that the statistics were preliminary.
Gunpoint robberies, like the one at Avianne, have tended to be less common than so-called smash-and-grab robberies, in which thieves shatter display cases with sledgehammers and take what they can before fleeing, Kennedy said.
“The laws if you are caught and convicted are much more severe if you have a firearm,” Kennedy explained.
He also said that robberies were “relatively infrequent” on West 47th Street despite a high concentration of jewelers in the area.
“Security is good on 47th Street,” Kennedy said. “It has very good police patrols, it has an element of private security as well, and you have a lot of jewelers who are very sophisticated with respect to the issue of security.”
Employees at Jewelry Display of New York Inc., a second-floor store across the street from Avianne, said they had noticed a group of three men lingering near the store Thursday and Friday afternoons. One of the people they noticed, employees said, appeared to be the man in the bucket hat.
“It felt like they were scoping the place out,” said Jester Sanchez, 23.
It was unclear why Avianne was targeted. But unlike some neighboring stores, Avianne was open on Sundays, which tends to be a less busy day, something Kennedy said that jewelry store robbers tend to favor.
Avianne caters to celebrity clientele. It has sold pieces rappers like 2 Chainz, Lil Wayne and Minaj, cleaned a gold chain for Bieber and designed a custom 15-carat engagement ring for the singer Ciara. (The engagement didn’t last, but the diamonds are forever.)
Still, even with its celebrity customers and a large Instagram following, Avianne’s store in Manhattan remained a consumer showroom that attracted a broad swath of shoppers.
For Avianne and similar stores, the risk that a potential customer might turn out to be a jewel thief is part of the cost of doing business, Kennedy said.
“You’re a retailer,” he said. “So you’re going to let these people into your store.”
This article originally appeared in
.