FIFTEEN designer handbags – 14 Hermes and one YSL – worth a total of about HK$1.44 million (US$184,000) were stolen from a shop in Hong Kong’s busy financial district on Monday morning after its display window was smashed, according to a police source.
The store in the Man Yee Building shopping centre in Central was fenced off as investigators gathered evidence at the scene.
“The display window was broken, and the shop had been ransacked. A one-metre sledgehammer was found inside the store,” a police spokeswoman said.
After viewing security camera footage, officers are searching for three suspects in connection with the case.
“Three masked men used a hammer to break the display window of the store at about 6.30am before entering,” the source said, adding that the raid took less than a minute. Two of the burglars were also wearing hats. So far, no one has been arrested.
The raid came to light when a security guard discovered the damaged window at the first-floor store in Queen’s Road Central and called police at 7.49am. Detectives from Central police district are handling the case.
The shop, which opened on October 24, is a pop-up store for online luxury bazaar Guiltless. According to its website, the store is expected to be open until December 26.
Guiltless was founded by Yen Kuok, the youngest child of Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok. Like many of the items the company carries, the stolen handbags were second-hand items.
The incident comes just three months after three thieves made off with HK$24 million worth of jewellery from the Tsim Sha Tsui branch of Chow Sang Sang jewellery store in another smash-and-grab raid. The three robbers fled on a motorcycle.
In March, a masked man used a sledgehammer to break the display window of another jewellery shop in Tsim Sha Tsui and escaped with a diamond worth HK$5.2 million.
Police handled 137 reports of robbery in the first 10 months of this year, down 39 per cent compared with the figure in the same period last year.
Read more at: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/2122728/fourteen-he...