Gunman Gets Half-Million in Jewelry

Newport Beach police and Neiman Marcus officials said Monday that they captured on videotape a robbery in which more than half a million dollars in jewelry items were taken from the store Sunday.

Surveillance videotapes taken in the Fashion Island store include the image of a gunman who pulled off the robbery, the second major jewel theft in the county in 2 weeks. The tapes also show the bandit leaving the parking lot in a gold, late-model Mazda, police said.

A man wearing a tan, pin-striped leisure suit walked into the jewelry department about 4:30 p.m. Sunday and waited for customers to leave before he asked a store clerk to help him with an item in one of the display cases, Newport Beach police spokesman Robert Oakley said.

The man then showed the clerk a blue-steel, semiautomatic pistol in his waistband, handed her a green shopping bag and said, “I want it all,” Oakley said.

When a second clerk appeared, the robber drew “his weapon and brandished it,” Oakley said. “When the first clerk didn’t do what he asked fast enough, he bent over and helped himself” to the jewels.

The robber then left through the store’s north door with bracelets, necklaces, earrings and rings with a retail value of $562,400, he said.

Gayle Dvorak, vice president and general manager of the store, said Monday the employees were unharmed.

On Nov. 22, four gunmen entered Slavick’s jewelry store in South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, taking an estimated $1 million in jewelry.

Authorities said there appeared to be no link between the two robberies.