Jewlery Store Owner No Stranger to Robbery

Thursday night's violent home invasion/kidnapping robbery at gunpoint of the owner of Shuler's Jewelers store owner may the most dramatic, but not the first time he has been robbed.

The store in East Norriton was robbed on December 15, 2011 in a smash and grab robbery captured on security cameras and posted on Youtube.

One of the company's former branch locations in the Chesterbrook Shopping Center was also robbed several years ago in another smash and grab robbery.

Workers at Diane's Sidewalk Deli in Chesterbrook recalled the robbery that happened on a weekday morning. Witnesses to that crime, who did not want to be identified by name, recall seeing three people running from the scene towards the shopping center's parking lot.

"It happened in about 60 seconds" one witness tells TE Patch.

Thursday night's home invasion robbery is a much more violent, personal crime.

According to Tredyffrin Police, masked gunmen confronted the jeweler and his wife in their Tredyffrin home, tied them up, robbed the house and then forced the man to drive them to his East Norriton store in his own car. The robbers then used his car as a getaway vehicle, leaving the victim behind.

According to police, neither Howard Zenker or his wife was physically injured in Thursday's brazen, violent crimes.

East Norriton Police are assisting in the search for the gunmen who left Zenker behind and physically uninjured as they fled in his Volkswagen Passat.