LAFAYETTE, Calif. (KRON) -- A brazen smash-and-grab robbery perpetrated by masked, sledgehammer wielding suspects in Lafayette over the weekend was caught on surveillance video. Just days after being pepper-sprayed by the suspects, the shop's owner spoke with KRON4 about the daylight robbery.
Joy Di Stacio said she just happened to look outside her window early Saturday afternoon while sitting in her chair next to the cash register at Divine Consign in Lafayette and had an idea about what was going to happen.
"I saw them in the parking lot. I just happened to turn and look out there and see the black car and then they jumped out," said Di Stacio.
Di Stacio has owned the shop on Oak Hill Road near Highway 24 for a decade. She said Saturday's robbery was the third theft she has reported to Lafayette police since the pandemic.
SF to end free distribution of fentanyl paraphernalia without treatmentThe previous two incidents were burglaries.
"So, I grabbed whatever jewelry I could get my hands on, and I kept, you know, taking pieces as they were in," she said.
Surveillance video shows Di Stacio and employees interacting with customers when the sledgehammer wielding suspects barge in, pepper spraying her and anyone else in their way. They smashed the display case and took off with what Di Stacio estimates was about $45,000 worth of jewelery.
Di Stacio says she was briefly blinded but called police once she could open her eyes. She described the suspects as, "Small, young, white and very well-trained to do what they did."
Saturday's robbery comes just weeks after a group of thieves used pepper spray and hammers to steal more than $100,000 in jewelry from a consignment shop in Orinda.
Making matters worse, Saturday's robbery happened after Di Stacio had to put her 10-year-old dog Olive to sleep.
"And, she's a dog I always took to work with me. She was here every day I was here, so I'm glad she didn't have to go through that," said Di Stacio.
The Lafayette Police Department has not responded to our inquiry for an update on this case.
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