SUNLAND : Jewelry Bandits Are Caught After Heist

A curious onlooker and a nosy police dog helped Los Angeles police capture five armed robbers after they stole about $100,000 in cash, jewels and Rolex watches Tuesday from a Sunland jewelry store.

When the group of bandits moved their van from one parking space to another outside the Ronstan jewelry store in the 8300 block of Foothill Boulevard, a woman in the parking lot became suspicious.

When the men all left the van together and entered the store at 11 a.m., she went to a pay phone and called police.

“She said, ‘This really doesn’t look right,” Detective Marshall White said.

She was right.

By the time the armed bandits left the store--after handcuffing several customers, breaking glass cabinets and absconding with the goods--several squad cars from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division were already on their way, White said.

And a police helicopter deployed to the area was hovering overhead by the time the men fled in the van down Foothill Boulevard.

“They walked in there and really did a number,” White said. “But all five were arrested, we got the van, which had been stolen earlier, and all the guns that they used.”

Several police cruisers pulled behind the van on Foothill Boulevard and two of the men were arrested at the scene.

But officers had to chase three other men through a nearby residential area, and didn’t notice one of them hiding in a tarpaulin-covered hot tub until a police dog indicated he was inside, White said.

“The canine sniffed him out,” White said. He said all the stolen goods and the cash were recovered.