By the Daily Post staff
A crew of seven robbers took $50,000 in handbags from the luxury consignment store TheRealReal at 379 University Ave., just two weeks after 11 thieves took $100,000 in handbags from the Louis Vuitton store at the Stanford Shopping Center.
This latest heist was reported to police on Monday at 5:56 p.m. Police said their officers responded quickly, but the crew was already gone.
Five thieves entered the open store and began ripping handbags from security cables, police said. The store’s security officer attempted to block their exit, but they pushed him out of the way.
When he followed them out of the store, he encountered two additional suspects who had remained outside during the theft.
One of those suspects told the other to “pull the gun,” and that other suspect then told the security officer, “Don’t make me pull the gun,” according to police.
The security officer never saw a gun.
All seven suspects than ran east on University Avenue, and the security officer reported hearing tires screeching from vehicles on Waverley Street. No vehicles were seen.
Employees estimated that the crew stole about 20 handbags, with a total value of more than $50,000.
The security officer and another employee could only describe the suspects as black males in their early 20s. All were wearing face coverings and hooded clothing with the hoods up.
Police said they will not be releasing any surveillance images of the incident because the footage would not aid in the identification of the suspects.
Police said they’re looking into the possibility that this heist may be related to the one at the Stanford Shopping Center on June 7 at the Louis Vuitton store or an earlier one at Neiman Marcus.
Ladies, be careful when you’re shopping for handbags and stay out of the way of these thugs.
A few more cops walking a beat might have stopped this. But here in Palo Alto we’ve been cutting the police departments budget.
Really, walking the beat?? When was the last time anyone saw a cop walking a beat in downtown???
Of course there’s no cops walking beats. City Hall prefers to use our money paying millions of dollars to consultants for Fiber-to-The-Home even though the city can’t even provide decent customer service during power outages, solar permitting, etc.
It’s just SO much more important for us to pay to revitalize City Hall and to build a new hugely expensive Public Safety building than to actually provide public safety. Eveb with all the complaints about fireworks, they can’t remember that ShotSpotter exists to pinpoint locations. For this we pay them big bucks.
I leave nearby and have been walking Univ Ave for the last 5 yrs and have NEVER seen a single cop walking there.