Marquette police say 3 women damaged pro-Palestinian display. DA reviewing case on 1 who was armed.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office is reviewing an incident earlier this month in which Marquette University police say three women, including one who carried a gun, began pulling flags from a pro-Palestinian display.
Marquette police referred a misdemeanor charge of theft while armed to the district attorney's office to review, but it was not clear as of Tuesday afternoon whether prosecutors would charge Kathryn M. Hinderks-Schlotman in the case. Marquette spokeswoman Monica MacKay said a status hearing was scheduled for May.
Campus police say the three women — Hinderks-Schlotman, Alice J. Hinderks-Schlotman, and Marnie B. Atias — trespassed when they arrived on campus April 7 and headed to a university-sanctioned display of thousands of flags staked in the ground. The flags were intended as a memorial for those killed in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war.
The women are not Marquette students, faculty or staff.
The women pulled up some flags and began stuffing them in trash bags, according to police reports obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Police arrived at the display about two minutes after the women arrived, the reports said.
As officers arrested the women, Kathryn Hinderks-Schlotman told police she was concealed-carrying a loaded handgun and had a permit.
The women told police they wanted to "make a dent" in the display and leave bags of flags next to garbage cans on campus, the police reports said.
Atias said she was emotional because the day marked six months since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and her daughter went to Israel to fight, according to the police reports. She said the display was "disheartening," and that she had called Marquette police earlier in the day to ask if the flags were put up with permission.
The women said they are part of a local chapter of a group called "Run for their Lives," which encourages community members to take a weekly one-kilometer walk to raise awareness about the Israeli hostages that Hamas insurgents took in the attack. They said they saw a post about the flag display on the local "Run for their Lives" Facebook page.
Questioned by police why she would bring a gun to campus, Kathryn Hinderks-Schlotman said in part: "I grabbed it because I didn't know what would happen."
Alice Hinderks-Schlotman and Atias were given tickets for trespassing and theft, according to the police reports. Kathryn Hinderks-Schlotman was given a trespassing ticket, and her theft while armed case was forwarded to prosecutors. The women were banned from campus.
Pro-Palestinian activists said it was another incident that made Arab and Muslim students feel unsafe on campus.
"Our Palestinian students were terrified when they heard about this," said Marquette English professor Jodi Melamed, the faculty adviser for Students for Justice in Palestine.
The flag display, which organizers said had 41,000 flags, was part of a week of advocacy events planned by the Students for Justice in Palestine group. It is no longer displayed.
The incident comes as tensions on some campuses around the country reach a fever pitch. At Columbia University in New York, days of large demonstrations and security concerns have prompted its president to move to mostly hybrid classes until the end of the semester. Nine people were arrested Tuesday at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus after forming an encampment to express solidarity with Palestine.
UW-Milwaukee students recently picketed Chancellor Mark Mone's Shorewood home in protest of tickets five students received for a February sit-in outside his office.
Editor's note, April 26, 2024: This story originally quoted a faculty member saying Palestinian students were so terrified by vandalism of a temporary memorial to people killed in Gaza that they canceled an event. In fact, they postponed planning the event, but then went ahead and held it this week.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee DA reviews case of woman Marquette says damaged Gaza display
