A New Hartford jewelry and pawn shop suffers a huge financial loss after being burglarized this weekend. Our Beth Jones spoke to the store's owner about the incident, which he said comes as a shock after years of doing business.

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NEW HARTFORD, N.Y. -- The owner of Legg's Diamond Jewelry and Pawn Shop received a startling call Sunday morning after an employee sent to the Commercial Drive store walked in on the aftermath of a burglary.

Brian Legg, the store's owner, said, "He opened the door, smelled smoke, saw stuff all jumbled around. Looked at the safe, saw a hole in the safe and called me up."

Legg says that steel safe, which is an inch and a half thick, had a triangle shaped hole cut in it. It had been emptied, along with several other display cases. Taken together, he says, the loss is huge.

"Roughly totally there's a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of jewelry, stones, diamonds, gold silver, coins, really high end coins," said Legg.

New Hartford Police say they are following up on a few tips and leads that have been called in. They say resolution of incidents like these usually depends on DNA evidence. Though they could not discuss the details of this case, police outlined the types of things that can provide clues in incidents like this one.

Matthew Sica and investigator with the New Hartford Police Department, explained, "We would be looking for fingerprints, anything they might have touched that we might be able to get some kind of DNA evidence on. If they cut themselves we'd be looking for blood, saliva stuff like that that we might have to go on."

In the meantime, Legg is also taking steps to find out who is behind the burglary, which he says for him is an unprecedented event after being in the business for almost 20 years.

He said, "I'm serious about offering a reward for any information leading to arrest and conviction of the people involved in this."

Anyone with information regarding the burglary at Legg's Diamond can contact New Hartford Police at (315) 724-7111.