THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
May 10, 2023 at 19:08 JST
Police officers subdue a teenager who ran near an apartment building in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on May 8. (Yuji Masuyama)
The robbery of a luxury watch store in Tokyo’s Ginza district was apparently a tightly scheduled affair perpetrated by bandits who did not know each other beforehand, investigative sources said.
The May 8 heist at the store specializing in Rolex watches lasted for only two minutes, but the three masked bandits collected more than 100 watches in that time, the sources said.
According to the sources, while the three were stuffing watches into bags, one of them was heard saying: “It’s still OK. We have 30 seconds left.”
The Metropolitan Police Department said those words indicate that plans, including a strict schedule, had been compiled beforehand.
The license plate of the van that they used for their getaway matched the number for a vehicle that was reported stolen in Kawaguchi, a city directly north of Tokyo, on May 7, the sources said.
The van was found abandoned in Tokyo’s Minato Ward, about 3 kilometers from the watch store.
Police discovered 30 to 40 wristwatches in a bag inside the van, as well as around 30 watches in another bag in the vicinity, the sources said.
Four teenagers from Yokohama believed to have been involved in the robbery were discovered in an apartment building near the van in the Akasaka area of the ward on May 8.
The four, ranging in age from 16 to 19, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing.
According to the sources, all four teens have said, “We don’t know each other.”
Police are investigating how they got together and if someone was giving them instructions from the outside.
The robbery became almost immediately known because it was conducted on a busy street often filled with tourists in one of the ritziest areas of Japan. Several bystanders recorded the heist and uploaded the footage on social media.
The trio broke into the store at 6:18 p.m. on May 8, smashed showcases and filled bags with watches before fleeing the scene around 6:20 p.m., the sources said.
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