x
Breaking News
More () »

Buckhead jewelry store hit by thieves again, months after looters first struck in late May

Estate Jewelers spent months recovering after looters made off with much of the store's inventory in May. Now the store is cleaning up once again.

ATLANTA — Surveillance video shows three people shattering the front door with a brick and running inside Estate Jewelers At Buckhead around 12:45 a.m. Friday. 

Inside the store the trio can be seen busting into display cases, filling a box with jewelry, and breaking a door to enter the back of the store. The owners told 11Alive, in the back of the store, the trio was unable to open the store's safe.

Timestamps on the store's surveillance video show after 1 minute and 51 seconds the thieves take off. Eight minutes later, an Atlanta Police patrol car enters the parking lot outside the store in the 2900 block of Peachtree Road in Buckhead.

An Atlanta Police report details officers responding to an alarm, finding shattered glass in the entryway of the store, and searching for suspects - but none were found. 

Alla Isakov's family owns the store. She said watching the video and seeing the damage in-person is heartbreaking. On Friday Isakov was still adding up the total damages and stolen jewelry, but it will be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

"It is just a mess. It is sad, there is glass everywhere. Still a little shaken," Isakov said. "We are trying to recover from the last break-in, and then we walk into this again."

Back on May 30, surveillance video showed around a dozen people inside the store, stealing jewelry, breaking the display cases, and then running off. 

Isakov said the damage and stolen property from the May 30 incident totaled around $90,000.

It happened after racial injustice protests in downtown Atlanta began peacefully, but then turned violent. Looters damaged storefronts from downtown to Buckhead, including Estate Jewelers. 

On Friday, Atlanta Police told 11Alive by e-mail the May 30 incident is "still open and is being actively investigated."

The damage from the looters temporarily closed down the store. The thieves who targeted the store on Friday set the store back once again.

"We were just trying to clean-up, so we just finally set-up again and restored all the showcases and set it up to where we can be functional again - just to start from the beginning again," Isakov said. 

Whether any of the same people entered the store in May and again this week is unknown. 

"They had on masks, they had gloves on, you can't even see their faces. It is hard to tell," Isakov said of the trio that entered the store Friday.

Before You Leave, Check This Out