Dramatic Scarborough jewelry store robbery attempt caught on video​on April 4, 2025 at 7:34 pm

Toronto Police are appealing for witnesses after video captured a dramatic attempted robbery at a jewelry store in a Scarborough shopping plaza early Thursday night.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Cops said the attempt at the store — identified as VHV Jewellers in the video posted by @Meroge.j on Instagram — happened at 6:26 p.m. as a pickup truck repeatedly backed up into the store’s front.

The video shows three or four suspects dressed in black following on foot and the truck appeared to break glass at the front of the store but ultimately they appeared to be foiled in gaining entrance by some iron bars.

The clip then shows the suspects, all dressed in black, flee along with the pickup driver and a passenger who get out of the truck, and all five get into a waiting nearby white car.

“When I came out there was a big noise,” said Meroge Jeyaseelan, who said he recorded the video after being in the area with his wife following her dentist appointment.

“So the first hit, I wasn’t able to record it. The second hit I saw that (to) the VHV Jewelry Store. So a Honda Ridgeline, 2018 model, hit the glass door. So there was in that particular truck there was two guys. And there were three guys outside. And they were trying to get into (the store) but there was an iron gate so they couldn’t even get into the store so they ran away and there was a white Honda Civic waiting for them and they took it and they left.”

Article content

Article content

Jeyaseelan, the business manager at Frontier Fine Cars in Scarborough, said he was able to identify both the suspect pickup truck and the suspect getaway vehicle given his line of work.

He said his first concern was the safety of his wife.

“I was like, I really wanted to protect my wife because there are young kids over there, like four or five people, so I told her to get into the car,” said Jeyaseelan. “So you can hear that in the video. I told my wife to get into the car and I started recording it. There were a lot of people there. The plaza was packed. And they have the guts to do that in the daylight time.”

Police say there there were no descriptions of the suspects.

Toronto Police spokesperson Ashley Visser confirmed on Friday morning that the investigation was still active but “there were no injuries, and there was nothing taken from the store.”

Article content

Jeyaseelan said he was told by the store owner that this was the second time there’s been a robbery or robbery attempt at the store whose phone number wasn’t being picked up Friday.

“The store owner came out and she was panicking,” he said. “So I quickly walked to her and said, ‘It’s okay. I’ll call the cops. You, just don’t worry.’ There was a hammer on the floor, pretty much beside the truck. There was a long iron hammer. She said, ‘My store got (robbed) a couple of months ago too.’ It’s the second attempt to the same store.”

For months now, Toronto and other nearby municipalities have been plagued by so-called smash-and-grab robberies where gangs of masked robbers enter stores, often with hammers, and break jewelry display cases and flee with merchandise.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Article content