Women's Purses Stolen While They Prayed at Dearborn Mosque

DEARBORN, Mich. (WJBK) -- Two men could hold the keys to solving a brazen robbery at a Dearborn mosque. Last Friday during afternoon prayer, someone swiped two purses from the purse bin at an Islamic worship center on the 6000 block of Schaefer.

"It's unfortunate that a person would choose to victimize somebody in a situation such as that," said Thomas Teefy with Dearborn Police.

Police say part of the worship center is open to visitors and the theft took place when the female worshipers went to the altar.

"The purses were in a different part of the building and once they were done with the service, they went back and discovered that their purses with the contents were missing from the area where they normally store those within the mosque," Teefy explained.

However, two men were close by sitting behind a temple wall inside the mosque during prayer service, so police think they may have seen something. Dearborn Police want to hear from these men or anyone who knows them.

"They were in the area where the prayers were taking place adjacent to the area where the purses and things were stolen, so again they would've been in a position to have potentially seen any perpetrators that may have taken the purses," Teefy said.

Police want to stress that they are not calling the two men suspects. They say they just want to talk to them and see if they saw what happened.