Long Beach robber who stole half a million dollars in jewelry gets 28 years in prison

A Long Beach man who led a robbery crew responsible for a string of stickups in the Antelope Valley was sentenced Friday to 28 years and three months in federal prison, prosecutors said.

Kaleb Williams, 38, masterminded several armed robberies in 2019 and 2020, according to federal prosecutors, including one where his crew of half a dozen accomplices made off with 348 pieces of jewelry from a store in Lancaster.

The robbers menaced employees with guns, smashed display cases and then fled with the merchandise worth about $479,000 in July 2019, according to the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

Williams and his band of robbers also stole $10,000 from a Party City in Palmdale in October of that year, authorities said.

“During that robbery, the robbers grabbed a store employee by the shirt and dragged her through the store,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. “One of the robbers, armed with a .45-caliber firearm, shot at a glass door that had closed and locked behind them during the robbery, shattering the door and allowing them to escape.”

They also robbed a Home Depot in Lancaster in May 2020, where they stole more than $6,000 from a vault, prosecutors said.

Officials said the crew was caught by a specialed team aimed at disrupting “the most damaging and horrific crimes” that are typically “committed by a relatively small number of particularly violent individuals.”

“Violent gun crime corrodes our community’s feeling of safety,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement on Friday. “Today’s sentence shows criminals that when you break the law and use a gun to do it, the penalties will be severe.”

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