A young man told police that he modeled his heist of a jewelry store after a movie in which masked hoodlums dressed as nuns commit armed robbery.
Unlike in Ben Affleck's movie "The Town" though, the gunman in this real caper wore a clown mask and he was toting a BB gun.
Gwinnett County Police said Thursday that Seung Woo Park, 18, and John Nguyen, 20, were responsible for the Dec. 10 robbery of a jewelry store on Old Peachtree Road. Two masked robbers, one toting a gun, took $68,000 in jewelry, plus $20 from the cash register, at the S.E. Diamonds store in unincorporated Duluth, police said.
On Wednesday, police captured Park and Nguyen and a third man, Chang Choi Rack, 18, in connection with a string of auto break-ins. A search of their vehicle turned up tools for breaking into cars and items stolen from the auto break-ins, plus masks like those used in the diamond store heist and a black Glock replica BB gun, police said.
The three were each charged with 11 counts of entering auto and 11 counts of possession of tools for the commission of a crime. Detectives later connected Park and Nguyen to the jewelry store robbery, and they have been charged in that case. The stolen jewelry has not been recovered.
Park told investigators that he was inspired to commit the crime by the 2010 film, which Affleck directed and acted in.
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