SHERMAN OAKS : Family Robbed of $8,000 Cash, Jewelry

A family of five and two visitors were robbed at gunpoint in their Sherman Oaks home in an incident that bears some similarities to a recent residential robbery in Van Nuys, Los Angeles police said.

Two armed robbers forced the victims to lie face down on the floor and bound their hands with duct tape before ransacking the house and escaping with more than $8,000 in cash and jewelry, Detective Mel Arnold said.

The doors and windows of the house in the 5300 block of Sunnyslope Avenue had been left open to cool it, enabling the thieves to enter without effort about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Arnold said.

Van Nuys detectives are looking into connections between that incident and a residential robbery on April 17, when a couple and their two children were held up in their driveway on Enadia Way as they returned home from synagogue on the first night of Passover.

The thieves escaped with more than $6,000 in cash and jewelry after forcing the father to open a floor safe in the house and withdraw cash from an automated teller machine.