Video: Explosive used in robbery of Gelderland jewelry store

A robbery caused massive damage at jeweler Paul van Zeeland in Velp on Monday morning. The three perpetrators used an explosive to blow open the roller shutter and then ransacked the store, manager Gerrit-Jan Grandia said to Omroep Gelderland.

The robbery happened at around 3:15 a.m. on Monday. The perpetrators smashed eight showcases and took "an incredible amount of jewelry" with them, Grandia said. All in all, the robbers were in the store for around two minutes.

Karin van Zeeland, the widow of jeweler Paul van Zeeland, is shocked. "I thought the entire facade of the house was done with. It was an incredible blast", she said to the broadcaster. "Everything was full of smoke. When I came to my positives, I saw the boys walking in. They were just goblins wearing black."

Grandia can not yet say how much jewelry the perpetrators got away with. "There is still jewelry under all the glass", he said. "We are busy getting everything ready so that we can work. It is of course very annoying that we lost a lot of jewelry that we would have liked to sell. But the important thing now is to get everything safely behind the glass and to clean up the mess."