Lilburn Jewelry Store Robbed at Gunpoint

Two men armed with handguns robbed Jewelry Liquidators on Stone Mountain Highway last week, taking jewelry, watches and cash.

When the two men entered the store May 1, just before 5 p.m., one was carrying a Rolex and started asking questions about it. Then the men jumped over the counter to where the store manager, Khuong "James" Tran, was standing. They each pulled out a handgun and demanded that the manager open the safe, Tran told Gwinnett County Police Officer J.A. Witkowski.

Tran told the men he could give them the money in the cash drawer, but that he didn't have access to the safe. Then another employee, Susan Scott, who had been in a curtained-off office looked in to see what the noise was about, and the men "shoved the gun in her face" and order her to open the safe, according to the police report.

About that time, another employee, Beth Scott, came up from a back room and told the men that she could open a safe.

The men emptied the safe, then got the three employees in an office room. One of the employees hit the alarm panic remote. 

The suspects took all the jewelry that the employees were wearing, and then removed the hard drives from the security system, which contained the video from the surveillance cameras. They ordered the employees to put their cell phones on the floor.

The employees were ordered to go into a bathroom and close the door while the suspects left the building.

The suspects were both black males about five feet, 10 inches tall. One was described as having a muscular build and the other as being "physically fit." One wore a red shirt and a blue baseball cap, possibly with a Chicago Cubs logo. The other was wearing a dark T-shirt and a dark black or gray baseball hat.

No one saw the suspects arrive or leave in a vehicle. An employee who had been standing outside the store on Highway 78, waving a sign at cars passing by, told police he did not see anything and didn't know that the business was being robbed until told by the manager afterward.

During the investigation, an abandoned vehicle was found at the entrance of the nearby Columns of Paxton apartments. The witness who called 911 about the car said he saw two black males get into a dark SUV and drive away from the entrance of the apartment complex.