A daring and unusual jewelry store robbery in Cupertino, Calif., left a 54-year-old security guard dead, the San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday.

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A daring and unusual jewelry store robbery in Cupertino, Calif., left a 54-year-old security guard dead, the San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday.

Detectives weren’t disclosing all the evidence they’ve gathered. The quantity of jewelry taken wasn’t disclosed, but a sheriff’s department spokesman said the robbers cleared out the interior display cases of the Jade Galore Jewelry Co. in minutes.

`’They seemed to know what they were after,” Sgt. Mark Eastus told the newspaper. “It had the overtones of a well-planned and executed mission.”

Meanwhile, some South Bay robbery experts said the method of the crime was puzzling, the newspaper reported. Lately, organized jewel thieves have shunned robberies of stores in favor of hitting couriers and salespeople once they leave a store. There’s less risk outside, with no customers to get in the way. And without store security cameras and guards, there’s less chance of being caught.

The takeover-style robbery-in which gunmen invade a store-is rarely seen in the area now, although it bedeviled law enforcement in the early 1990s.

JCK