The men were dressed as construction workers in high-visibility vests. Few seemed to notice as they quickly walked toward a building and forced their way inside.
Then they were gone, zipping through the city with millions of dollars in stolen jewelry and other treasures.
It didn’t happen in Paris. It happened in suburban Queens.
Just three days before burglars in neon safety vests broke through a second-floor window of the Louvre and absconded with roughly $102 million worth of jewelry, a band of burglars in similar disguises staged a miniature version of the heist in the Jamaica Hills neighborhood.
On the afternoon of Oct. 16, three men, two of whom were disguised as construction workers, forced their way into a residential home, stealing $3.2 million worth of jewelry and cash and an array of personal items before escaping in a blue Hyundai Elantra, the police said.
The heist took place at the family home of Abid Mukhtar, a jeweler with a store in the Jackson Heights section of Queens. The police did not confirm whether the thieves had specifically targeted Mr. Mukhtar and his family, but neighbors said they thought the break-in had been premeditated, noting a series of unusual happenings on the block in the days before the burglary.
As of Wednesday, nearly two weeks after the break-in, the police not made an arrest. They put out a statement on Tuesday requesting the public’s help in identifying the burglars.
“Whatever we have, they took everything,” Mr. Mukhtar said in a brief phone interview on Wednesday.
According to Mr. Mukhtar, the October afternoon had begun as usual — he and his wife had been at work at their store, Abid Jewelers, and their children had been in school. The house was empty; the street was quiet.
But around 2:20 p.m., there was a sudden intrusion.
In surveillance video recorded from the driveway of the home, two men can be seen approaching, walking with purpose down the sunny block. The men are each masked and dressed in all black but for a neon construction vest and white hard hat.
The pair moves swiftly toward the three-story white clapboard home. A blue Hyundai follows them, backing rapidly into the driveway.
In the moments that followed, the two men and the Hyundai’s driver walked up to the back of the house, pried open the door and forced their way in, according to the police. There, they ransacked the home, pulling clothing from dressers, grabbing family mementos and scattering items across the floor of every room as they went. Before leaving through the side door, the men grabbed a safe, pulling it from the house and into their getaway car.
Inside was a stash of jewelry, the family’s passports, birth certificates, Social Security cards and $50,000 in cash, the police and Mr. Mukhtar said.
They took “all my kids’ memories. Movies, camera, everything,” Mr. Mukhtar said.
It was not until later that day, when Mr. Mukhtar’s daughter returned to the house, that the family discovered they had been robbed.
The burglars in Queens and in Paris are not the first to use high-visibility jackets as a method of disguise. The gear, which was created as a way to make laborers more visible while they worked, is now so commonplace that those who wear it blend right in.
In New York in recent years, criminals have dressed this way while robbing jewelry stores.
On Wednesday, neighbors in Jamaica Hills said they were shocked by the brazenness of the break-in, which occurred in broad daylight. Many said they worried that Mr. Mukhtar had been targeted because of his jewelry business.
“Somebody knew something,” said Ramnarine Basdeo, 80, who lives across the street.
Charita Bondanza, 54, another neighbor, said she had noticed that the car the police believe was used by the burglars had been parked on their street, near the Mukhtars’ home, for at least four days before the robbery.
“They scoped it out,” she said.
Less than a year ago, Mr. Mukhtar’s store in Jackson Heights was robbed of about $800,000 worth of jewelry. He had been inside the shop when three masked thieves smashed the display windows with hammers and sledgehammers.
Even as residents took in the news, many said they couldn’t help but be reminded of the startling daytime burglary that had played out across the ocean.
“That’s the Louvre heist,” James Olaguibel, a neighbor, said Wednesday. “This is the Jamaica Hills heist.”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
The post Burglars in Disguise. Millions in Jewels Taken. But This Was in Queens. appeared first on New York Times.
