May 20, 2022
Masked smash-and-grab thieves have made off with a huge haul of jewelry in a 30-second robbery of an Iranian-owned jewelry store in Beverly Hills, California.
The store operates with a locked door with only known customers allowed entry. But it puts very valuable items in its window facing the street, protected by a special window of tempered glass.
The five thieves appear to have known that valuables and not cosmetic displays were in the shop window. And they appear to have known that the window wasn’t an ordinary one.
They arrived with a massive sledge hammer and struck the window hard more than a half dozen times before it shattered into thousands of pieces. The thieves then plucked out selected items, indicating that they knew what was most valuable, and fled.
They arrived in a black SUV that had been stolen. They abandoned it in the street, running down an alley beside the jewelry store to enter a second vehicle and escape.
Peyman (Peter) Sedghi, the owner of the shop, was in the back in his office when the attack began. He said he shouted for his employees to hunker down for fear the thieves might fire weapons. He grabbed a pistol he keeps in the shop, but did not fire. Everything was over in about 30 seconds.
The robbery occurred in broad daylight at about 1:45 p.m. with lots of foot traffic and cars whizzing by. The shop is near the intersection of South Beverly Drive and Charleville Boulevard.
Smash and grab robberies became common in the 1930s, and were particularly prevalent in the 1940s, but decreased in frequency as shopkeepers took to strengthening their windows and/or fitting protective grilles. By the 1950s, forced entry to shops was being effected by using cars and grappling irons to pull window bars off windows. Smash and grab has returned to prominence in the past year all over North America.
The Beverly Hills burglary was captured on video by several onlookers March 22. In the clearest video, a driver passing by the jewelry store recorded the suspects grabbing items out of the smashed storefront window.
Sedghi said the burglars stole items worth at least several hundred thousand dollars and perhaps a couple of million. He was still tabulating the loss when he spoke. But he said one necklace stolen was priced at a half million dollars.
“We sell high-end jewelry and watches so they took big diamonds, big necklaces, Rolexes, Patek Philippe.… They knew exactly what to take,” Sedghi said. “Thank God, no one was hurt.”
He said he stopped employing an armed guard during the pandemic. “Now we’re going to get an armed guard again.”
Wesley Aframian, who owns another jewelry store on the block, came outside when he heard the noise of the sledgehammer. He said he kicked one of the thieves and grabbed some watches that one of the thieves was trying to take away.
The Los Angeles Police Department said robberies so far in 2022 are up 18 percent in the city from last year.
Lt. Giovanni Trejo, the Beverly Hills Police Department spokesman, said, “The identification of the suspects at this point is not clear, even their genders, for that matter. They appear to be males, but we have not determined that yet. Because it was so fast and quick, it’s going to take a little bit of time to make sure that we arrive to the proper conclusions.”
According to Art Confidential, when Sedghi first opened his store decades ago, it was originally called House of Taylor Jewelry, named for a partnership he had launched with actress Elizabeth Taylor. He was a longtime friend of Taylor’s manager and had sold many pieces to her over the years. When Taylor decided to launch her own jewelry line, she hired Sedghi as a consultant.
When Sedghi told Taylor of his plan to open his own store, she asked him to partner with her. After roughly five years of her line being on the market, Sedghi bought the license and became the exclusive location for her collection.
