Watsonville jewelry store broken into for the second time in a year

Early Thursday morning, Fatima’s Fine Jewelry on the corner of Main and Second Street in Watsonville was robbed. Just after 4 a.m. a burglar threw a rock through the glass door and quickly rummaged through a few cases of jewelry.

The suspect left within two minutes with a several cases of silver jewelry. A few minutes later, before police arrived, two more thieves showed up and stole more jewelry. The owners of the jewelry store believe the second round of thieves were homeless people.

Watsonville PD say the second round of thieves are likely known transients.

“It’s mostly the frustration of being vulnerable to this type of thing,” owner of Fatima’s Fine Jewelry, Fatima Carlos said.

Less than a year ago the shop was broken into and the suspects stole even more jewelry. Since then, the jewelry shop has boosted security but to them it feels like there hasn’t been much of a change.

“It’s just the frustration you have of being exposed and knowing someone can come in whenever they feel like it, because they know they can,” Carlos said.

Police say the suspect had likely scouted out the shop since they quickly chose which cabinets to break into.

The owners were hoping for a faster response time from police.

“I understand there’s other things going on in town, but you know the fact that it was a little over 11 minutes or, so I feel like we can do a little better,” Carlos said.

According to WPD, there were a number of calls police were responding to around the same time Thursday morning that could have delayed the response.

This is the second time in the four years Fatima’s has been burglarized at their new location on Main Street.