Tokyo: Four people taken into police custody on Monday following a robbery case the same day in which three robbers smashed their way into a luxury watch shop in Tokyo’s posh Ginza district are teenage boys aged 16-19, police sources said Tuesday.

The four, including an 18-year-old high school student, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing into a building different from the watch store. All of them except for the high school student admitted to the charges, according to the sources.

The juvenile crime division of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department is questioning the four, all residents of Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, seeing a possibility that they were involved in the robbery case.

At around 6:20 p.m. Monday (9:30 a.m. GMT), a bystander made an emergency call reporting that there were three men destroying glasses and stealing items from the watch shop, which is located some 500 meters south of Ginza Station on the Hibiya Line of subway operator Tokyo Metro Co.

According to the MPD’s Tsukiji police station, the group of three, with their faces covered with white masks, pointed a knife at a sales clerk in his 30s and threatened him that he would be killed if he does not lie down.

The three then smashed glass cases with what appeared to be crowbars and stole over 100 luxury-brand wristwatches. They fled in a white minivan.

There were no injuries among sales staff.

After the robbery, police found a car thought to be used by the robbers in Tokyo’s Minato Ward and held the four men who were in the vicinity of the vehicle.

“I heard the loud sound of breaking glasses and an alarm went off immediately,” a 28-year-old woman, who works nearby, recalled the incident.

“I feel surprised and threatened by the fact that a robbery occurred in the sphere of my everyday life,” she went on to say.

Items on display at the shop included Rolex and other luxury wristwatches priced between around 500,000 yen and 22 million yen.

JIJI Press