Real clowns steal fake jewellery

Police in Denver are on the lookout for two gun-waving jewellery store robbers who threatened to shoot employees and customers. As it turns out, the joke was on the two clowns who robbed Sonny's Rocks on South Colorado Blvd. on Wednesday morning. The two robbers, who were both dressed in bizarre costumes and wearing white face paint, pointed guns at employees and customers while they cleared the cases of jewellery.



“They came in with their guns drawn,” says store owner Mark Allen. Surveillance video tape shows the robbers cock their guns as they enter the store. Their faces are covered with heavy white makeup and their lips are covered in black. One is wearing a scraggly black wig, the other a long blonde wig. “It's surreal … they came in with clown makeup on,” says Allen. “They were, like, in costume."

Allen says he told them they could have whatever they wanted. His main concern was that the two men didn’t hurt anyone. “I don't care about the jewellery," he says. The robbers emptied the jewellery cases into plastic garbage bags and then fled.


Video link.

But the joke may be on the clowns. Sonny’s Rocks, like most jewellery stores, no longer displays real jewellery, a change the store made when the price of precious metals and gems started going up a few years ago. They didn’t get any real diamonds. Instead, they made off with garbage bags of fake gold, platinum and cubic zirconium. “It's not real,” Allen says. “It's totally worthless."