5 culprits on the run after robbing jewelry store in Ontario city [Video]

Police are looking for five culprits who robbed a jewelry store inside the Pen Centre shopping mall in St. Catharines on Thursday. (Photo: Niagara Regional Police)

Five culprits who robbed a jewelry store inside a busy St. Catharines shopping mall on Thursday and then pepper sprayed two bystanders who tried to stop them from fleeing are being sought by police.

The robbery took place around 1 p.m. when the bandits, all wearing hooded sweatshirts, entered Griffin Jewellery at the Pen Centre on Glendale Avenue and used a small sledgehammer to smash several display cases, Niagara Regional Police said in a news release issued Thursday night.

“The suspects proceeded to remove jewelry from the cases and place it into bags they were carrying,” police said of the incident, which forced the lunchtime evacuation of the popular Niagara region mall.

Not all shoppers left the mall, though, as a “small number of witnesses” chose instead to try stop the bandits from getting …