MACON, Ga. — Things in the Macon Mall can be slow sometimes.
Alissa Pennington has worked at John Smeal & Co. Jewelry for two years. It was a normal day on Monday until a man made a break for it with thousands of dollars in merchandise
“So, we had a guy that came in asking to have his diamonds tested,” she said.
Pennington said the man then asked to look at some tennis bracelets for his girlfriend.
“He asked to feel the weight of two different ones,” Pennington explained. “It's not too unusual to happen with us to feel the weight of the jewelry."
According to store policy, Pennington says as long as customers are not covering their face or wearing a hat, and they have a reasonable amount of trust, they can touch the merchandise.
“He was wearing a FedEx shirt and it's not unusual for FedEx to deliver a package and take a look around the store,” she said.
But that trust turned out to be misplaced.
“Whenever she asked for them [tennis bracelets] back, he turned around and ran off, and pushed another coworker flat on his back,” she said. “You don't ever think that it's going to happen to you. It could’ve happened to anyone and that is very scary.”
The man ended up taking the jewelry and running, and Pennington says it's not the first time the store has been robbed.
“The first time it happened in my store, I was actually there. The guy put his hands on my employee and pried the earrings out of her hands, and it was sad because there was nothing she could do,” said Kimberly Pennington.
She’s the store manager and Alissa’s mom.
She says they followed the store’s protocol of calling mall security and law enforcement. But still, it did sit well with them.
“I feel like it could happen again, and I feel like things are just going to get worse,” Pennington explained.
She says folks aren't even trying to hide their identity to commit crimes and they feel helpless.
“You don’t know what these people have on them,” Alissa said. “You don’t know if you take off after them if you're going to get hurt. We need more security, and especially for our own safety because we don't know what could happen next."
Pennington says another jewelry store and a watch store near them have also been robbed in recent years
They’ve filed a report with the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office.
We spoke with the county who owns a majority of the mall.
They say there is full-time security at the mall hired by the Hull Property Group, who owns the other part of the mall. They say there is a sheriff's office substation in the mall that will be moving closer to the retail and dining area during their revitalization process.
Currently, it’s near the Bibb County Board of Elections' new office space.