A jeweler was held hostage alongside his pregnant wife and daughter by three armed burglars while their family home was searched for valuables.
Valdes told WPLG that he was ambushed at around midnight on Thursday by three masked men in his front yard.
The men forced him inside the home with his wife and daughter before getting all three of them together in one room in an ordeal that last five hours.
York Valdes owns two jewelry stores in Miami-Dade County and has well over 100,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.
In his social media videos, he is routinely seen flaunting gold bracelets, expensive watches and even cash.
He also posts videos out in front of his home, where he has luxury cars and a life-size statue of Saint Lazarus, the Catholic patron saint of healing and health.
He thinks his online presence is one of the reasons he was targeted on Thursday night.
‘The biggest fear of my life is that something would happen to my daughter,’ he wrote in Spanish on TikTok following the incident. ‘This is a lesson I learned to slow down a bit on social media.’
York Valdes is seen in one of his videos flaunting cash, a gold bracelet and a gold watch, as well as a number of other pieces of jewelry
The bigtime Miami jeweler also has a life-size statue of of Saint Lazarus, the Catholic patron saint of healing and health, right in front of his home
The men who robbed Valdes held him, his wife and daughter (all pictured) at gunpoint
Valdes fears that the men who stole from him watched his videos, especially the ones where his house was on display.
‘They think that I have money at my house. It’s the first time that I bring some expensive watch to my house. I never bring it to my house. I always put it in my safe box,’ he said.
A neighbor told CBS News that he and his wife saw three men walking around the neighborhood the night of the robbery.
‘It’s just weird that we saw three males in dark clothing walking up and down the street, in the middle of the street. It was just peculiar because, you know, I’ve been in this neighborhood for almost 12 years and it’s quiet over here,’ Ashoka Lillie said.
Lillie said he locked up his home, then heard a scream about two hours later.
‘It was a scream, it was like “Oh my God” and then they went quiet. Then we heard dogs barking last night,’ he said.
The suspects got away with much of Valdes’ home jewelry collection and his white Cadillac SUV.
Valdes said he will be slowing down his social media uploading after the robbery
Investigators have not found the suspects and are urging anyone with knowledge of the case to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477
A spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Office, Samantha Choon, said while the family escaped without injuring, the incident would have been terrifying.
‘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,’ she said.
‘There were no injuries, and we are fortunate for that; but this was a scary situation.’
Investigators have not found the suspects and are urging anyone with knowledge of the case to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
