Jewelry thieves target Indian homes in Lexington

Thieves might be targeting Midlands residents of Indian decent if a string of recent burglaries are connected.

The Lexington County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the break-ins, where, in one incident at a home in the Clearwater community near Highway 6, burglars tied up a man with belts and held him at gunpoint and stole $600,000 in gold jewelry, WIS is reporting.

A day earlier, $10,000 in jewelry was stolen in a burglary north of St. Andrews Road.

Investigators are looking into reports of two people who appear to be women dressed in Indian clothing.

A security video shows “what appears to be two women wearing Indian clothing walking up a driveway and ringing the doorbell at a home said to be the Hunters Mill Road area of West Columbia,” in one incident, WIS reported.

And a few days after the Clearwater burglary, two women wearing Indian clothing were reported as suspicious to the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, the news outlet said.

“We don't know that they're connected, we don't know that they're not. Right now, we're in the early stages of our investigation and part of that is to see if they're connected in some way,” Lexington County Sheriff’s spokesman Adam Myrick told WIS.

Myrick said investigators received a tip about a bright blue Honda sedan, seen in a picture taken in the neighborhood where the two women were caught on camera ringing doorbells.

This story was originally published May 6, 2017 at 10:51 AM with the headline "Jewelry thieves target Indian homes in Lexington."