Deputies: Thieves use fireworks to steal watch

A Florida Mall jewelry store employee had just put a $16,900 Rolex on a potential customer’s wrist Sunday afternoon when she heard two loud bangs, Orange County deputies said.

The noise came from a pile of fireworks, which deputies say a man set off as his accomplice snatched away the expensive watch and ran with the crowd of shoppers, who thought they heard gunshots. Eleven people were injured, and five of them received medical treatment. None of the injuries was life-threatening, sheriff ’s spokesman Jeff Williamson said.

Deputies are looking for the two men and found surveillance camera video of them running out of the mall, Williamson said.

An employee at Mayors Jewelers told deputies a man who looked as if he were in his early 20s walked into her store and asked to look at a Rolex watch, according to an incident report. She asked him to have a seat while she got the style he was looking for, and he started flipping through a magazine, records show.

The watch had a silver-and-gold band, gold hands and a black face. The employee brought it to a display table, records show, and she put it around the man’s wrist.

“Something seemed odd, so she kept her hand on the watch while the subject tried it on,” Deputy Douglas Kimberlin wrote in his incident report.

Suddenly, she heard two bangs that sounded like gunshots outside the store. The man grabbed the watch with his other hand and “ripped it out from her grasp,” scratching her finger, Kimberlin wrote.

Outside the store, shoppers heard the bangs and started running out of the mall. A manager from another store told deputies he heard someone yell, “He’s got a gun,” just before the fireworks went off, records show.

Deputies searched the mall looking for an active shooter, records show. They swept the mall and didn’t find anyone with a gun, but they did find a pile of exploded fireworks.

“As I got closer to the area of the spent fireworks I could smell the aroma of burned gunpowder as if there were an explosion recently,” Kimberlin wrote.

The two men escaped amid the commotion, deputies said.

Deputies are looking for two men, both about 5 feet, 7 inches tall. The one who set off the fireworks was wearing a gray shirt and gray pants with a blue drawstring backpack and red sneakers. The man who stole the watch was wearing a maroon shirt with long black sleeves, gray sweatpants, white and blue shoes, and a white and blue baseball cap.

Anyone with more information about the robbery can call Crimeline at 1-800-423-8477.