SOUTHAVEN, Miss. – Police are looking for a man who was wearing a bathrobe when he stole a 7-carat diamond ring from a Southaven jewelry store Friday afternoon.
Employees at Robert Irwin Jewelers on Goodman Road said they were uneasy when the customer entered the store wearing the robe and carrying a fanny pack under his arm.
“It was the way he was carrying the thing. I just felt like there was a gun in it,” said Ora Allen, a saleswoman at the store.
Allen said another saleswoman began helping the man when he told them he wanted to see a ring he had been looking at the day before.
“He kept saying ‘no, that’s not it’,” Allen said. “He was with her a good ten minutes, you know, looking at stuff.”
She said the other saleswoman began secretly signaling that something wasn’t right, and that’s when she reached for the store’s silent alarm.
“I was helping someone up here, so I just laid it down beside me,” she said.
Allen said the manager remembered seeing the man in the store a day earlier and was also trying to help when the man snatched the $14,000 ring out of her hand and left the store.
“She was holding it in the case when he said that’s not the one, and she pulled it out,” Allen said. “She was trying to show him the price tag, and he just grabbed it and ran.”
Surveillance cameras at the jewelry store captured images of the suspect when he came in the first time and when he showed up in the bathrobe.
In one of the pictures, you can see he’s wearing a graphic Popeye t-shirt, black hat, black pants, and carrying that fanny back.
If you recognize the accused jewel thief, call the Southaven Police Department at (662)-393-8652.