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Women Arrested For Taking Children to Vandalize Mosque In Arizona
Tahnee Gonzales and Elizabeth Dauenhauer and three children were allegedly spotted on a Facebook Live video making hateful comments about Muslims while taking items from a mosque.
Two women allegedly vandalized a mosque in Tempe, Arizona while making disparaging remarks towards Muslims. Even worse, they had children with them. Oh yeah, and one of the women allegedly posted a video documentation of the incident to her Facebook page.
Tahnee Gonzales (whose profile picture is at the top of this story) and Elizabeth Dauenhauer were arrested on Thursday afternoon. Both women face felony burglary charges, according to Arizona Central, a local USA Today paper.
A video on Gonzales' Facebook page on March 4 appears to show the women, in addition to three children, at the Islamic Community Center of Tempe. They allegedly steal pamphlets and brochures and encourage the kids to help them.
“Look at this mosque, this ugly mosque here,” a female voice says in the video. The same voice goes on to call Muslims “Satan-worshippers.” One of the children can be heard chiming in saying, “they smell goat.”
Before arriving at the mosque, the same woman can be heard saying "look at this group of infidels." Then, cheering.
In the footage, the women claim they want to halt "the infiltration of the Arabic Muslim coming in and destroying America.”
That video has since been taken down. In another video on Gonzales’s page from the same day, the children are in the back of the car holding up and waving American flags while a song blasts, “Build a wall.”
It is unclear if the women have lawyers who can speak on their behalf.
"Based on the details of the crime, an enhancement of hate crime will be considered for sentencing," Detective Lily Duran, a Tempe Police Department spokeswoman told Arizona Central.
The Anti-Defamation League put out a statement about the incident, which reads in part: “Watching these videos is extremely disturbing and ugly on so many levels. It’s bad enough that these individuals felt emboldened to go to this mosque and threaten the security of those peacefully practicing their religion. But to involve young children and to indoctrinate them with their hate is abhorrent.
Sadly, the behavior we see in the videos is consistent with the growth in hate crimes, rise in attacks on Muslims, and the surge in anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Semitism we have seen the last couple of years.”
[Photo: Facebook]
