$40K in diamonds stolen from Braintree store

BRAINTREE, Mass. -- Braintree police continued to search for two suspects who stole $40,000 in diamonds.

The alleged heist occurred around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

The men got away with two diamonds from a Zales store at South Shore Plaza.

Surveillance footage shows one of the suspects in the store, holding a cell phone up to his ear. He sat down at the diamond counter, where a clerk showed him two loose diamonds worth $20,000 a piece.

Within seconds, the suspect grabbed them from the clerk’s hand and vanished.

"He looked like he knew what he was doing. I would suspect he'd been the store... What I suspect is that he knew that there were cameras in the store, so he was very cautious not to look up and expose himself to those cameras," said Dep. Supt. Russell Jenkins of the Braintree Police Department.

A car and driver waiting for the suspect outside took off with police close behind. The chase ended at Milton Square when police lost sight of the pair.

Police believe the robbers deliberately hit during the morning hours.

"It's a time when the mall isn't that busy, so maybe he felt that was a better time to go when he wouldn't be intercepted. I would call it a well-planned heist. It wasn't not a spur-of-the-moment thing," said Jenkins.

Authorities are searching for a dark 1998 Oldsmobile Cutlass with Michigan plates. They will be checking to see if there is a link between this incident and several other recent jewelry store robberies on the South Shore.

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