Masked men robbed U.S. reality TV star Kim Kardashian West at gunpoint in a luxury residence Paris early on Monday, stealing jewellery worth millions of dollars, police and her publicist said.
According to Reuters five attackers struck around 3 a.m. (0100 GMT) inside the block used by celebrities and wealthy individuals behind the city’s Madeleine church, a police source told Reuters.
The attackers were wearing ski masks and jackets with police signs. Kardashian had been locked in the bathroom and tied up, the source said.
The men stole a jewellery box with five to six million euros worth of jewels and a ring worth about four million euros, the source said.
Police were guarding the site on Monday morning.
Kardashian West’s husband, rapper Kanye West, abruptly ended a performance in New York less than an hour into his set, as news of the robbery spread.
“I’m sorry I have a family emergency, I have to stop the show,” West said in video footage posted on Twitter by fans at the Meadows Festival in the city’s borough of Queens.
Kardashian West’s spokeswoman, Ina Treciokas, had earlier said two masked gunmen dressed as policemen held up the star in her room. “She is badly shaken but physically unharmed,” Treciokas said.
Kardashian West was in Paris for Fashion Week and had attended shows at Balmain and at Balenciaga.
The TV star is one of the most popular celebrities on Instagram, with 85 million followers. A regular fixture at Paris Fashion Week, she is a close friend of designer Olivier Rousteing at Balmain.
She has stayed in the residence at least once before, in 2014, before her marriage to rapper Kanye West.
Kardashian, who rose to fame along with her sisters, mother Kris and other family members on the reality television program “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” parlayed the exposure from the show into an empire spanning the worlds of fashion and entertainment.
Her marriage to West, with whom she has two small children, increased the couple’s dominance of tabloid, gossip and day-to-day headlines in the United States and abroad.
But they have also drawn criticism for their seemingly limitless appetite for fame, and social media users wasted no time in posting messages on Twitter making light of the robbery.
Most comments, however, were supportive. “Kim Kardashian is a mother, a wife, daughter and sister. Despite the fact that you don’t like her, being held up at gunpoint is not funny,” said one post by Alieuisha.
Kardashian first rose to fame as a friend and stylist to Paris Hilton. She later appeared in her own reality programme, Keeping up with the Kardashians, about her family.*
*BBC
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