Police are asking for help in finding several men suspected of robbing a jewelry store at 80 Bowery on Tuesday afternoon.
The robbers threatened employees of Lucky Diamonds, shot at the glass doorway and fled with $100,000 in jewels. More details from Crime Stoppers:
It was reported to police that on Tuesday September 18, 2018, at approximately 2:15 p.m. inside of 80 Bowery (Lucky Diamond Corp.), one of the individuals displayed a firearm while the second male jumped over the store’s counter and placed approximately 123 pieces of jewelry inside of a bag. The male with the firearm fired one round through the store’s front glass door when they were unable to open it. The second male kicked the glass down and both ran out of the store. They fled inside of a light colored 4 door sedan southbound on Bowery and then Brooklyn bound on the Manhattan Bridge. Two other males acted as lookouts on the outside of the store during the robbery. One male fled on foot southbound on Bowery and the other fled inside of a dark colored four door sedan northbound on Bowery. One of the cars is described as a light colored four door BMW sedan. The other is described as a dark colored four door Nissan Maxima sedan.
A jewelry designer who works in the store, Ka-Lai Wong, told Channel 7, “The gunman had said to his partner, ‘Do what you gotta to do, do what you gotta do,’ and he was just stuffing the bag with the trays of jewelry out of the window… Only afterwards did I think, this could have been really disastrous for all of us inside.”
This week, City Council member Margaret Chin renewed her plea for NYPD security cameras at the intersection of Bowery and Canal Street. In 2013, she allocated funding for cameras here and elsewhere in Chinatown. “In this area,” she said, “we have seen numerous robberies and other crimes that threaten our small businesses and our community’s sense of security. I am asking NYPD to install this camera before someone is seriously injured or killed in another incident. We cannot afford to wait any longer.”
Anyone with information about the most recent robbery should call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
