“I was screaming to get out”

An employee of a Louvre gallery on duty when thieves broke in and stole eight of France’s crown jewels said “no one was prepared” for what happened when visitors started arriving on Sunday morning.

“Suddenly we heard a huge noise,” she told France Inter radio station, in the first account given by an officer at the scene.

The unnamed employee and two colleagues initially thought the noise was an angry visitor, but it was not a normal sound: “It was a dull, slightly metallic noise.”

In fact, that was the moment thieves used an angle grinder to break through a reinforced window into the Apollo Gallery, which houses the Louvre’s collection of historic jewels.

Within eight minutes, the gang seized treasures including a necklace belonging to Napoleon’s wife Empress Marie-Louise and a tiara belonging to Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugenie, worth a total of around €88m (£77m).

The thieves used a mechanical ladder on the back of a truck to lift them up to a first-floor balcony to enter the gallery.

Two tourists ran towards them in a panic, she said.

“I saw one of the criminals turn around with what looked like a chainsaw to me, then I shouted to my colleagues to get out,” she recalled. She shouted a second time that it was a robbery and to run.

One of her colleagues raised the alarm on the walkie-talkie and then “we ended up evacuating the visits without realizing exactly what was going on.” They closed all the doors as they left to protect the adjacent galleries.

On reflection, the employee said: “It was unbelievable to us that the shop windows could be broken … we never thought for a moment that there was such a risk … no one could be prepared for this.”

Another Louvre employee came forward to describe the moments after the gang’s escape.

The anonymous security guard described a very strong smell of gasoline when he arrived at the spot outside the Louvre where the gang had parked their truck.

“I ran outside through the (glass) pyramid and across the courtyard… I got there just as the criminals fled on a scooter,” he told BFMTV.

The gang smashed the truck’s fuel tank and there was a torch nearby, he said. “It’s clear they intended to set their vehicle on fire. I really think we foiled their plan because they would never have left so much evidence behind.”

“They even lost one of the pieces they intended to steal, because they had lost (Empress) Eugenie’s crown, which they had just stolen, and it had fallen to the ground.”

The guard and his colleagues were the first to find the crown, he said: “I can’t say I jumped for joy, especially because the piece was obviously damaged.”

Museum director Laurence de Cars said the empress’s crown appeared to have been damaged when the gang slipped it out of a narrow hole they had cut in one of the two display cases with an angle grinder.

She told French senators this week that initial indications were that a “delicate restoration” would be possible for the 19th-century crown encrusted with diamonds and emeralds.

Although French ministers insist security at the museum worked properly during the day, the Louvre’s director spoke of years of underfunding and just one exterior security camera facing the wrong direction where the break-in took place.

Her damning assessment was backed up by the official, who complained that “for some time we have felt that the security culture at the museum has been in decline”.