FOOTAGE FROM A violent robbery in the US state of Arizona has been spread online in order to portray refugees in Ireland as violent.
The minute-long video features a man attack a female cashier at what appears to be a mobile phone shop, during which he punches her repeatedly while she screams on the ground. The woman eventually manages to escape and flee the shop.
The footage has appeared on Irish social media accounts in recent days. Posts that can still be seen online claim have been viewed more than 95,000 times on Facebook.
“Henry Street Dublin,” one such post reads. “Another poor refugee. You won’t see this on Crimecall or hear about it on the news.”
However, the clip was from a robbery in Phoenix, Arizona in June, 2022, where it was widely covered by local media, which showed the same footage, but without cropping out the margins.
An uncropped version of the video shows the logo of the Phoenix Police, which released the footage.
The footage also shows that the shop uses a distinct lime green branding, which is consistent with Cricket Wireless, a US-based phone network.
None of the phone shops listed on Google Maps in Henry Street in Dublin use the same colour scheme. One kiosk does use a similar shade of green but it doesn’t have a shop floor, such as that seen in the video.
In Arizona, local media reported that the suspect, a 33-year-old who suffered from psychological issues, was eventually turned into authorities by the perpetrator’s mother.
The victim of the attack suffered a broken nose before she escaped. She also needed a stitch on her face.
She was later interviewed by local media and said it was the third time she was the victim of a robbery while working at the same shop.
Videos taken out of context are regularly used by spreaders of misinformation to argue that non-Irish people are dangerous.
One recently debunked video was spread in May with claims that it showed immigrants fighting in Liffey Valley shopping centre in Dublin.
As in the case of the phone shop robbery incident, that assault did not occur in Ireland.
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