


A shocking video shows the moment a gang of brazen thieves crashed a car into a Southern California jewelry store in broad daylight, before bashing the owner with a chair and stealing $300,000 worth of merchandise.
The incident occurred around noon Saturday at Rodeo Jewelers, located in a busy strip mall on Foothill Boulevard in the Los Angeles suburb of La Verne
Surveillance footage from inside the business obtained by ABC 7 shows a white Honda sedan barreling through the store’s windows, sending glass shards and debris flying everywhere.
Four masked suspects brandishing hammers then jump out of the car and immediately go to work smashing display cases and grabbing pricey loot.
“It’s almost like a movie-life theft,” Lt. Cory Leeper, with the La Verne Police Department, told the news outlet. “They scouted the location, they had a plan, they executed the plan perfectly for what they were trying to achieve.”
The owner of the store was present during the robbery and tried to intervene, leading one of the intruders to attack him with a chair, as seen in the wild video.
The bandits emptied the shop of $300,000 of baubles and made their exit, which required them to climb over the roof of the car they had rammed into the storefront and left behind.
Police said they fled in a black 2013-2015 Nissan Altima with silver and black rims that was parked nearby.
The owner of the ransacked store said that he required seven stitches for his injuries suffered during the violent robbery.
The bold heist in La Verne came just days after a similar smash-and-grab raid that took place a few miles away at the Diamond Center store in Claremont. There, three men wearing ski masks barged into the business swinging hammers and emptied display cases of merchandise.
Police in La Verne are now looking to see if the two crimes are connected.