A 19-year-old serial thief who once tried to snatch the phone of Bridgerton star Genevieve Chenneour has been jailed for an additional two years and 10 months over a pair of machete-armed Rolex robberies in west London.
Zacariah Boulares admitted robbery, attempted robbery and two counts of possessing a machete after menacing his victims in broad daylight in the summer of 2023.
The court heard that on 9 August 2023, Boulares confronted Mark Turner in Kensington Square Gardens, aggressively brandishing a large blade before making off with his watch. Ten days later he struck again outside a Waitrose in Bayswater, attempting to tear a Rolex from the wrist of Dutch executive Neil Tallantire. He used “extreme intimidation” against both men, threatening them with the words: “give me the watch or I’ll chop your hand off.”
The case is the latest luxury-watch robbery to come before the courts — earlier this week a man was stabbed in Mayfair as a thief snatched a bag containing a Rolex.
In a statement read to the court, Mr Turner said he felt “cornered, deeply unsettled, and forced to evaluate my immediate survival”, adding that handing over his property “felt like the only way to avoid severe physical harm or worse.” Another of Boulares’s victims said he no longer felt safe in a neighbourhood he had known for 30 years: “I immediately panic where anyone tries to brush past me and am taken back to that day. I get chills down my spine.”
Sentencing him, Judge Jas Jandu said: “You clearly acted in a way that was totally unacceptable, rampaging around the streets with a deadly weapon.” He added: “Robbing people in broad daylight or attempting to do so and you should be ashamed of that.”
The judge questioned why the 2023 robberies were only being dealt with now, years after Boulares had already been sentenced for similar offending, and was told that “no rehabilitative work” had been carried out with him in prison.
Boulares has a history of targeting wealthy and well-known victims. In July 2023 he ambushed Songs of Praise presenter Aled Jones on Chiswick High Road, threatening to cut off his head before stealing the presenter’s £17,000 Daytona Rolex. Dealt with in the youth court later that year — when he was too young to be publicly identified — he received a 24-month detention and training order for that attack and a separate offence in which a £20,000 watch was stolen from a 70-year-old man.
After his release, Boulares embarked on a spree of thefts across some of London’s most affluent streets. Among them was the attempted theft of Genevieve Chenneour’s phone inside a Joe and the Juice café in Kensington, where the former athlete wrestled the would-be thief to the floor and struck him with the phone he had tried to steal. The actress later said the attack had left her with concussion, telling how her assailant had not expected resistance: “They didn’t expect me to stand up for myself – but I did.”
That same spree saw him steal a blind woman’s handbag and another woman’s rucksack, offences which earned him a 22-month prison sentence at Isleworth Crown Court last year. The Recorder of Kensington and Chelsea, Judge Martin Edmunds KC, said Boulares had deliberately targeted wealthy areas for “rich pickings”, describing a “systematic pattern of stealing from people as they are enjoying a meal or refreshment at a restaurant.” He is among a number of teenagers to face lengthy jail terms in London’s courts.
The court heard that Boulares has now accumulated 12 convictions for 28 offences, spanning violence, threatening behaviour, weapon possession and theft.
The pattern behind the attacks
Taken together, the offences sketch a clear playbook: daylight strikes in affluent parts of west London — a garden square, a supermarket frontage, a high street, a café — victims singled out for visibly expensive items, and threats of extreme violence designed to force compliance within seconds. Each confrontation needed only a moment’s opportunity, and each relied on the same calculation: that the victim would hand over the watch rather than risk the blade.
How to reduce your risk
If you wear an expensive watch in London, there are practical steps that can lower your chances of being targeted:
- Keep high-value watches out of sight when travelling, particularly late at night or in quiet streets — consider a cheaper watch for the commute.
- Stay alert around stations and busy pavements, and avoid posting photographs of valuables with live locations on social media.
- If someone demands your watch, hand it over. No timepiece is worth a serious injury, and as this case shows, compliance can be the difference between a stolen watch and a life-changing wound.
- Never chase or confront an armed robber. Call 999 if the robbery is happening or the offender is still nearby; otherwise report it on 101 as soon as you are somewhere safe. Try to remember descriptions, clothing, direction of travel and anything you noticed about the weapon.
Police have been increasing their presence around transport hubs after a run of luxury thefts — British Transport Police recently stepped up patrols at King’s Cross and St Pancras following a string of luggage thefts.
