Walmart employee aids police in tracking down Moorhead mosque vandalism suspect
"This person in particular got it narrowed down to the time frame of when this incident happened and then gave that information to one of our detectives."
MOORHEAD, Minn. (KVRR) — Twenty-two-year-old Benjamin Enderle sits in a Clay County jail tonight, accused of vandalizing a Moorhead Mosque.
His arrest is being credited to a Walmart store employee.
“An investigator came out when the mosque had video ready for us and we started working on the case,” Moorhead Police Chief Shannon Monroe said.
Monroe recounts how a Walmart security officer single handedly tracked down a suspect of a hate crime.
“Come the next day we had been notified from this store employee that they believed they had the sale of the red paint; and they gave us the other photographs and video that we needed to try and match up with what we had from the mosque,” said Monroe.
The Walmart security officer who is remaining anonymous crossed referenced sales of canned red paint at the Walmart location in Dilworth unfortunately she came up short.
It was when the loss prevention officer delved even deeper into her own investigation where she tracked sales of canned red paint to the Walmart on 13th Avenue South in Fargo. She matched the security footage of the man with the pictures released by Moorhead police of the suspect. She thought they looked alike and called police.
“This person in particular got it narrowed down to the time frame of when this incident happened and then gave that information to one of our detectives. They had to do some pretty extensive work in getting that person tracked down and all that came to be last evening when they were able to locate him, palace him under arrest, interview him and do a search warrant at his residence,” Monroe added.
A message of hate turning into a message of unity as Chief Monroe says law enforcement relies on people in the community for cases like these .
“That’s just the kind of community that we have here. This is something that moved this person enough to say I don’t want to see this happening here in my community and what can I do about it. So that’s wonderful that’s working together with our community exactly how we want to have that relationship with our community and it brought a quick resolution to this because of it,” Monroe said.
Monroe says the department would like to recognize and honor the anonymous Walmart employee who helped aid police in their investigation.
