London Jewel Heist: Thieves Used Diamond Drill To Get Through Two Meters Of Concrete

The jewel heist thieves who broke into safe deposit boxes in Hatton Garden, the diamond district of London, reportedly used a diamond drill to get through two meters of fortified concrete.

Noel Smith, a former thief, told reporters, a “foreign team” is behind the heist.

He said, “I’d say a vast amount of planning went into this. For a job like this from a criminal’s perspective you’d want a maximum of five people on the job itself. They would probably have been out of their by Saturday and then the stuff would have gone out of the country.”

The police told reporters that the gang used a Hilti DD350 industrial drill to get through the wall of the vault, having bored holes through the reinforced concrete.

DCI Paul Johnson said at a press conference regarding the heist, “The scene is chaotic. The vault is covered in dust and debris and the floor is strewn with discarded safety deposit boxes and numerous power tools, including an angle grinder, concrete drills and crowbars.”

Johnson discussed the heist in a full statement about the incident.

“Initially, police were called at 08:10hrs on Tuesday, 7 April to Hatton Garden Safety Deposit Ltd (HGSD) following reports of a burglary which took place over the Easter bank holiday. The building where the theft took place is made up of a number of businesses, with a communal entrance. The safety deposit business is in the basement. There was no sign of a forced entry to the outside of the building. The thieves have disabled the communal lift on the second floor and then used the lift shaft to climb down into the basement.”

For now, the police are in the process of identifying the owners of the safety deposit boxes which were robbed and are contacting them to find out what was stolen from the boxes.

At the same time, they are gathering all the CCTV footage that they can in a bid to find the perpetrators of the heist.