Victoria Police senior constable Adam West confirmed to Jeweller that on Wednesday, 4 February, just before 2:30pm, a number of masked offenders attempted to enter a jewellery store located on Sydney Road in Brunswick.
The group, which smashed the front door with a baseball bat, were unsuccessful and left empty-handed.
The store was identified as Najaf Jewellers, and while no one was injured, Soroush Haqiqi, the business owner’s son, said the would-be robbers had been armed with “tasers and other weapons”.
Haqiqi is the owner of Mecca Jewellery, another jewellery store located on Sydney Road that was robbed of up to $50,000 in gold jewellery on 21 January by a man who had reportedly been armed with a knife.
A third store, Medina Jewellery, which is located on the same street and is owned by Haqiqi’s family friends, also had at least $250,000 in jewellery stolen by three men armed with a gun, a knife, a taser and an axe in October last year.
Since mid-2014, Haqiqi said there had been about 10 attacks in total across the three stores, with Najaf Jewellers having been targeted two times prior to the most recent incident.
When asked what advice he had for jewellers looking to prevent such raids, West advised, “All jewellers should ensure that they have adequate security in place.”
However, Haqiqi said the two stores that his family owned, Mecca and Najaf, were already “highly secured with the best quality technology”, including double doors, sensors and bulletproof glass.
“There’s nothing more that we could do to improve the security, but still we are targeted,” he insisted.
“Word goes around. If robbers do something and get away with it, other thieves will be influenced and think they can get away with it too.”
Neither Haqiqi nor Victoria Police had any reason to believe the attacks were linked, and all three investigations are ongoing.
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