Jumping New York jewel thieves get away with over $500,000

(Reuters) - Police released video footage on Wednesday of three robbers they said jumped from one Manhattan building to another to loot over $500,000 in jewelry from a store on Christmas Day.

Police are on hunting for the trio who robbed the Ultra Diamonds jewelry store in a large commercial shopping district on 6th Avenue Saturday afternoon.

The men got into the closed store by initially breaking into a nail salon on the first floor of an adjacent building, police said.

From there, the robbers climbed onto the rooftop and jumped across to the building of shops that housed the jewelry store. Police believe the men might have then used a sledgehammer to knock a hole into the outside wall of the jewelry store, and snaked themselves inside.

Video footage shows the masked men rapidly ransacking several glass displays of jewelry and dumping the contents into black bags. Police said the men escaped back through the hole they smashed into the wall.

Employees at the Ultra Diamonds store declined to comment on the robbery on Wednesday beyond saying they were spending the day repairing the damage.

However, a spokeswoman for the national jewelry retailer praised the police's work.

"We don't have any additional information at this time but I know the New York Police Department has this under investigation," said Kris Land, Ultra Diamond's chief marketing officer.

"We're very pleased with how many people they've put on the case and how they're really digging into this."