|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The fallout from a high-profile armed robbery in San Ramon Monday at the hands of more than 20 suspects continues with updates released in recent days from the police department and the business targeted in the heist.
Heller Jewelers announced Wednesday that it was set to reopen its doors – which have been shuttered since the Monday afternoon burglary – on Saturday, thanking the community for their ongoing support.
“Heller Jewelers has been part of this community for more than 30 years, and we’ve always believed in the strength of the relationships we’ve built with you,” management for the store in City Center Bishop Ranch wrote on Facebook Wednesday. “Your support in the days since means more than we can express.”
Video of the robbery has been circulated throughout neighborhood groups and local news outlets as well as social media this week. The footage shows nearly two dozen suspects concealed by clothing and masks descend upon the jewelry store and rapidly smash display cases to grab their contents before shooting their way out of the automatically locking glass doors and fleeing in multiple vehicles.
The heist was addressed at the San Ramon City Council meeting Tuesday evening, during which SRPD chief Denton Carlson provided details about the police department’s initial response and the status of the investigation. As of that point, he said seven out of 23 suspects were in custody.
Carlson said that SRPD was first alerted to the incident just after 2 p.m. Monday, when a patrol sergeant tuned into the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office dispatch feed and heard reports that a group of armed robbers might be in Dublin.
“At that time our drone as a first responder team was on-duty, and so they went airborne,” Carlson said. “They were actually above City Center when the suspects ran out of the cars. They started broadcasting information to our patrol units 30 seconds before the first 911 call was received by our dispatch center. So our units started converging on City Center almost immediately.”
Although the suspects were only on the scene for approximately one minute and 20 seconds, Carlson said that police had begun to arrive as they were fleeing the scene.
“As the six cars that you saw fleeing were exiting City Center, our officers picked up three of those cars as they took off,” Carlson said. “And so we initiated a pursuit. Just because of safety reasons, we concentrated on one car. That car went northbound on 680. We engaged in a pursuit that was in excess of 100 miles per hour.”
Carlson said that SRPD officers continued the pursuit despite the dangers involved, including the armed suspects and evasive maneuvers they were using such as driving into oncoming traffic, until police had air support overhead. The vehicle was ultimately tracked to Oakland, where some suspects were apprehended.
“Because of the joint work and the help from assisting agencies, we have seven people already in custody for this crime,” Carlson said. “We’re working on the rest of them.”
The seven suspects in custody range in ages from 17 to 31, Carlson said.
“We’re continuing the work, just like we did with the incident that took place in March, 2023, and it will be an ongoing investigative effort,” Carlson said. “We’re not going to share too much more beyond that, just because it is an ongoing investigation and we don’t want to jeopardize that, but we are still working towards it. And as many as we can take into custody we will.”
This week’s robbery came approximately two and a half years after another major heist that also targeted Heller Jewelers in 2023. In that case, some of the suspects were apprehended due to a tracking device located inside a Rolex watch that had been taken. All five suspects in that case were sentenced on federal charges late last year. Some were able to evade authorities for as long as six months following the robbery in 2023, but the final suspect was taken into custody as of September 2023.
No further updates in this week’s heist were available as of Wednesday afternoon.
