Police and Bandits Meet, Kind of, at Jewelry Store

In the back of the Seal Beach jewelry store Friday, Police Officer Marty Donahue and the owner were scrutinizing videotapes of two men who had acted suspiciously, comparing them to descriptions of two bandits who had robbed a Garden Grove jewelry store.

In the front of the Seal Beach jewelry store Friday, two men were handcuffing the sales clerks.

“The first they knew something was going on was when they heard the display cases being smashed,” Seal Beach Police Sgt. Larry Sides said. “They ran to the front, saw two clerks handcuffed and Donahue chased (the robbers) out the front door and fired a shot into the front of their Toyota pickup.”

But the men got away with an undetermined amount of jewelry, Sides said.

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Bruce Beauchamp said that two Fridays earlier, on Dec. 20, two men robbed the Bridgecreek Coin and Jewelry store in Garden Grove and escaped with $6,000 in jewelry.

Beauchamp said Donahue, a Garden Grove officer, had gone to Webster’s Jewelers Rossmoor at 12413 Seal Beach Blvd. at 11:30 a.m. to see if the earlier robbers and the suspicious customers might be one and the same.