SAN JOSE — When Linh arrived at her uncle’s jewelry store earlier this month, she found a sea of police cars and her 88-year-old uncle sitting in a chair in front of the store, shaking and panicked – “in shock,” she said.
It was only about ten minutes after a car had rammed into the front of Kim Hung Jewelry on Aborn Road in San Jose. A crowd of more than a dozen people rushed in, smashed jewelry cases and made off with a bounty of stolen jewelry in the shocking Sept. 5 robbery; her uncle was violently shoved to the ground by one of the robbers.
The incident garnered international headlines and widespread outrage. The robbery was one of several brazen Bay Area smash-and-grabs that have made headlines in recent weeks. Twenty people, some armed with guns, stormed a jewelry store in San Ramon on Monday. Investigators linked a gang based in East Oakland with dozens of robberies including smash-and-grabs across the East Bay.
Less than one minute after the mass crime at the San Jose jewelry store, a second group of four people entered the ransacked shop to see whether there was anything left to steal, said Linh, who asked to only be identified by her first name due to safety concerns.
Video shared by Linh shows a white sedan pulling up and four people, dressed in black hoodies and masks, running into the store armed with hammers, then running back into the car just seconds later when they see the empty jewelry cases. Linh’s cousin — the son of the store’s owner, who had also been working in the store, and was about to call the police when the second group of robbers arrived — “just stayed there and looked at them,” Linh said.
Kim Hung Jewelry was the life’s work of Linh’s uncle Buy, who she asked be identified only by his family name due to safety concerns. He started out as a jeweler while living in Vietnam and opened his first store in California about 40 years ago.
The robbery prompted the creation of a new program in Santa Clara County that provides funds to small businesses to install concrete barriers and technology connecting security cameras to a real-time intelligence center at the San Jose Police Department.
Linh’s family has not yet received any updates on SJPD’s investigation, she said. As of a press conference on Sept. 17, no arrests had been announced. SJPD did not respond to an inquiry Friday about updates in the investigation.
At the scene, Linh immediately examined her uncle for injuries, she said. His toes were bloodied by shards of broken glass, and he had a bruise on his neck and cut on his hand. At first, none of his injuries seemed too serious.
When one of Linh’s cousins arrived with a first aid kit, they found more to be concerned about: the bottoms of her uncle’s feet were covered in blood when they removed his flip-flops. They removed three shards of glass from his feet, but Buy said he did not feel a thing.
“I asked him, ‘Uncle, (do) you feel it under your feet?’” Linh said. “Three pieces of the glass stick on. He did not feel it.”
“When you see something like that, it’s already (heartbreaking),” Linh added.
Linh asked her uncle how he was feeling and whether he was in any pain. But all her uncle said in response was repeat “Oh my god” and “Ready to go home” in Vietnamese.
That’s when they realized that something more was wrong and called an ambulance.
When the paramedics asked her uncle what time of year it was, he told them it was the beginning of August, Linh said. When they asked him where he was, he said he did not know.
At the hospital, doctors confirmed after an MRI scan that Buy had experienced a stroke, Linh said.
Buy spent two days in the hospital, where he suffered a heart attack while taking blood thinners to treat the stroke, Linh said. The doctors confirmed that both the stroke and the heart attack were results of the stress of the robbery.
After a period of recovery, he was sent home, where Linh’s cousin has since been caring for him.
“The whole family tried to come to his house every single day to talk to him,” Linh said.
Buy is out of the woods for the heart attack and stroke, but the recovery of his mental health will take much longer, Linh said. When Linh visited him earlier this week and asked how he was doing, he kept telling her, “It’s so scary.”
“All the family, all my cousins, they all say, ‘It’s so terrible, it’s so terrible,’ ” Linh said. “What happened to California now? What happened to the society now? What will happen to all of the small businesses?”
Buy’s son was also traumatized when one of the robbers pointed a gun at his head, Linh said – which made him feel like he was in the moment “between the death and the life.”
Linh expressed her gratitude for the support her family has received since the robbery.
“Thank you (to) all (the) Vietnamese community and all of the people in San Jose,” Linh said. “We need the safety of the community, not just only for the Vietnamese. That’s for the whole community in San Jose.”
The jewelry store will be closed for two to three months for repairs, Linh said. They have to order new showcases, repair the front of the store with stronger materials and wait for special-order supplies. The store had insurance, but the family will still have to pay for some repairs out of pocket.
The family also has to pay for the parts of Buy’s medical bills that are not covered by his insurance, Linh added.
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But even when the store reopens, Buy will not be returning.
“We don’t allow him to go to the store anymore,” Linh said. “(If) it happened again, what (would) happen to him if we’re not catching it on time?”
“We feel bad, we feel sad,” Linh added. “Jewelry … is his life.
“He’s very sad if he cannot go back to the store.”