Atlanta police are searching for two men accused of stealing donation boxes from the Al-Farooq Masjid mosque in Midtown on Friday evening.
The suspected burglary took place around 6:45 p.m. at the Al-Farooq Masjid’s main mosque on 14th Street, Atlanta police said. Few details were provided, but police said the two men went inside and took the organization’s donation boxes.
Investigators have released photos of the suspects and are asking for the public’s help in identifying them. The bald man wearing a blue shirt was seen inside the mosque earlier the same day, “so they may be familiar with the area,” police said. He also walks with a slight limp, favoring his left leg, police said.
The mosque’s copper domes are a familiar sight to anyone traveling through Midtown and the Home Park neighborhood. The building was completed in 2008, and the masjid is in the process of raising money for improvements to the facility, according to its website. The masjid reported online that it had raised nearly $90,000 as of Tuesday., but a spokesman said the organization’s losses were minimal.
The donation boxes inside the mosque are regularly emptied, so the fundraising efforts did not suffer a major setback, the spokesman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The spokesman did not share any details about how the suspects accessed the mosque, which is surrounded by a security fence.
Anyone with information is asked to submit a tip anonymously to the Crime Stoppers Atlanta tip line by calling 404-577-TIPS (8477), visiting www.StopCrimeAtl.org or texting CSA and the tip to CRIMES (274637). Tipsters do not have to give their names or any identifying information to be eligible for a reward of up to $2,000.
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