VIDEO New images of the escape of the thieves from the Louvre Museum, captured by a witness. “Damn, here's the police”
New images of the escape of the thieves from the Louvre Museum. Credit line: Poitout Florian/ABACA / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
The escape of two of the thieves from the Louvre Museum, who stole 88 million euros worth of French crown jewels, was captured in a new video that has spread on social networks, reports The Guardian.
The 36-second video clip, which French newspaper Le Parisien said it has verified as authentic, shows two men dressed in black, one wearing a yellow reflective vest and the other a motorcycle helmet, slowly descending the nacelle staircase in the museum's Apollo gallery.
The footage was shot from a window near the museum, overlooking the Quai François Mitterrand, where the thieves had earlier parked a stolen truck equipped with a 30-metre extension ladder which they used to access the first-floor gallery.
“Individuals are on scooters,” comes a voice, presumably a security guard, apparently speaking into a radio station.
“They will leave, they will leave”, the voice is heard. Seconds later, the men drive off on two scooters.
“Go away,” the male voice then says, as another voice exclaims, “Damn, the police are here.”
How the Louvre thieves acted
Two of the four members of the gang of thieves broke into the gallery at 9.30am on Sunday, shortly after the museum opened, smashing an apparently unsecured window and then using cutting discs to pry open two display cases containing the jewellery.
They made off with eight pieces, including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave to his second wife, Marie Louise, and a tiara that once belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.
French media estimated that the operation took less than seven minutes, with the two men who broke into the gallery staying inside for 3 minutes and 58 seconds. French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said more than 100 investigators were working on the case.
Questioned by senators on Wednesday, the director of the Louvre Museum, Laurence des Cars, admitted a “terrible failure”. She admitted the existence of deficiencies in the video surveillance system, especially the lack of surveillance cameras inside and outside the museum.
The testimony of the supervisor who witnessed the theft
On the floor where the thieves broke in, a security guard had just started her shift.
“There were three of us at this level of the gallery. And we saw something very violent. A very violent outburst, a noise, but without being able to interpret what it was. We could think that it was, as can happen, a visitor who gets angry and loses his temper. We understood almost simultaneously that it was a robbery”, said the security guard, contacted by phone by France Television, quoted by News.ro.
“In a few seconds, we evacuated everything in the gallery and closed all the intermediate doors to prevent intruders from reaching the other rooms,” she added.
