A man snatched a tray of watches worth about $2000 in a daylight robbery of Huntly Jewellers yesterday.
Manager Kathy Delaney said the store was busy when a Maori man in his mid 20s wearing a baseball hat came into the store just before noon, grabbed a tray of about 20 watches and fled to a waiting getaway car.
She said it was the first time the jewellers shop had been robbed, saying it was pretty scary.
The robbery was witnessed by Himanshu Parmar, who was buying a present for his wife.
"I started to panic just as much as the staff as we were absolutely dumbfounded," Parmar said in a posting on Facebook.