HOUSTON – Jewelry salesmen and saleswomen are being targeted at such a high rate in the Houston area that some companies are banning their employees from carrying jewelry to and from stores all together.
"A lot of jewelry manufactures have basically told their salesman, ‘Don't come to areas where these gang activity things, robbing jewelry salesmen or whatever, are occurring.' So they just, basically, decided to just do their business in jewelry trade shows as opposed to sending salesmen out on the road," said Steve Silver, of the Jewerly Appraisal Services.
An alert was sent out Thursday from the Texas Jewelers Security Hotline about the most recent attack. KPRC 2 was told a man had just left a store in the Galleria area and was headed back to the airport when things turned violent.
"(He) was apparently tailed to the airport," said Silver. "At a stop light, (he) got bumped from behind. He got out, they got out, grabbed the bag and they took off. It was one of those things where they knew what they were doing."
Silver said the man who was robbed was carrying diamonds worth at least $1 million.
"You just hope he was insured, because it's hard to take a million dollar hit," he said. "It puts a man out of business."
The man was not hurt, but people in the industry worry that things could become deadly at any point.