STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Reported by Mike Matteo of Advance/SILive, click HERE to view article.
A pair of burglars made off with an estimated $250,000 in jewelry after breaking into the JCPenney store located at the Staten Island Mall in New Springville on Sunday. According to the NYPD, two people wearing all black broke into the store between 2:50 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., using a hammer to break two doors at the exterior entrance near Marsh Avenue.
After breaking the doors, the pair headed to the jewelry section and smashed several glass display cases. The two then exited the store with approximately $250,000 in jewelry and fled east on Marsh Avenue, police say. The burglary was not reported until approximately 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, the NYPD spokesperson said.
The spokesperson was not able to provide a description of the suspects and said that the investigation was still ongoing. On Sunday afternoon, an NYPD Crime Scene Unit was seen outside the JCPenney store, near the Marsh Avenue section of the mall. Two doors for the store’s exterior entrance were smashed in, with glass strewn about and crime scene tape blocking the entrance. The store was not open during the investigation, with interior mall entrance shut and signs reading “closed until further notice” taped to the glass.
Inside the store, NYPD crime scene investigators were seen working near the jewelry counter area of the establishment. Investigators exited the store at around 2:40 p.m. with several sealed bags in hand.
By around 4 p.m. Sunday, the store was open again, with signs posted to the broken doors asking customers to enter through the interior of the mall. While the circumstances of the burglary are different, this is not the first time that a large amount of jewelry was stolen from a store in the Staten Island Mall.
In 2023, a pair of men stole multiple watches from a jewelry store inside the Mall after smashing a glass display at the location. After shattering the glass, police at the time said two individuals took six watches totaling around $100,000 worth of value.
In response to this, the NYPD had ramped up police presence in the mall and spoke with business owners about crime prevention tips.
While employees from other jewelry stores said at the time that they were happy to see a police presence in the mall, others said that many of the tips were already part of safety practices that the jewelry stores implement in their daily operations.
Video of the 2023 smash and grab provided to the Advance/SILive.com, shot from about 15 feet down the corridor from the jewelry store, shows an individual running the opposite direction of the store, beginning in the first six seconds of the clip.
The footage does not show the display case being broken and it is not clear from the video if the person running had anything to do with the incident.