LONDON -- It was already one for the the history books, but photos released by police Wednesday show just how Hollywood-worthy the heist in the city's jewellery quarter really was.
Released by the Flying Squad, a branch of London's Metropolitan Police Service, the images show what detectives saw when they arrived at the scene of Hatton Garden Safety Deposit Limited on April 7. Namely, suspects drilled a 50-cm (20-inch) hole through the concrete wall of the vault, using a Hilti D350.
Police said the vault was covered in dust and debris, and the thieves left power tools, such as an angle grinder and concrete drills.
Officers collected more than 400 pieces of evidence, which have been recorded and packaged for analysis. They are reviewing thousands of hours of CCTV footage, and also created a graphic of the break-in on image platform ThingLink.
The thieves likely got into the building between the evening of Thursday, April 2 and Friday, April 3, by disabling a communal lift on the second floor, and climbing down the lift shaft to get to the basement, police said. From there, they forced through shutter doors into the basement, before drilling through the concrete wall where they accessed the vault, and broke into 72 safety deposit boxes.
In its statement released Wednesday, police also said there's an internal investigation into why an intruder alarm, which was activated, did not prompt police to go to the building.
Police have yet to make any arrests in the multi-million pound heist investigation.