Gunpoint Ordeal for TikTok Jeweler and Family
March 19, 25
(IDEX Online) - A jeweler with a huge social media following was held hostage for five hours - together with his young daughter and pregnant wife - as raiders ransacked their home in Florida, USA.
York Valdes, who runs two York Jewelry stores in Miami-Dade County, believes videos he posts to almost 200,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram may have led the attackers to his door.
Valdes told local media he was ambushed by three masked men outside his home at around midnight last Thursday (13 March).
He says one of them held the family at gunpoint in one room, while the two others searched for valuables and stole his jewelry collection, together with money, watches and clothes. They drove off in his white Cadillac SUV.
Valdes regularly posts Spanish language videos of jewelry and other valuables, his home - with a life-size statue of Saint Lazarus, Catholic patron saint of the poor and sick outside - and his cars.
"The biggest fear of my life is that something would happen to my daughter," he wrote in Spanish on TikTok after the attack.
"This is a lesson I learned to slow down a bit on social media."
Samantha Choon, spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade County Sheriff's Office, said: "There were no injuries, and we are fortunate for that; but this was a scary situation.
"They gathered the rest of the family, put them into a room, one of them held the family at gunpoint and the other two ransacked the rest of the house."
Pic from York Valdes' Instagram page