http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-922523.mp3
Kansas City, MO – While most Kansas Citians spent their 3-day holiday relaxing, one or more were working at burrowing through a wall of concrete and steel on the Country Club Plaza.
There is no quiet way to chop through a concrete wall, yet no one seemed to take notice in overnight hours of Sunday to Monday at 48th and Jefferson. Burglars were cutting a 4-by-3-foot opening in the outside wall of Vinca Jewelry.
A walkway between the store and a restaurant gave the criminals an amount of privacy in which to work on getting inside. Once there, they cut through six inches of steel-sided safe. And made a heist of diamond and other types of rings, loose diamonds, gold chains and other assorted jewelry.
Police would only describe the loss as "large" without putting a dollar value on it.
The store owner is quoted as saying the thieves must have had three or four hours to work unnoticed and made an escape without detection. And he made the discovery when opening mid-morning yesterday for what he thought would be a routine day of business.
Veteran police recall the most imaginative breakin on the Plaza they can recall was in the 1990's when someone lifted a manhole cover out of the street and pitched it through the front window of a bank.