A teenage Muslim girl killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a Virginia mosque was an apparent victim of "road rage" and her death is not being investigated as a hate crime, police said on Monday. Police said Monday that the murder was not now being investigated as a hate crime.
The teens told police they'd been walking from a McDonalds to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center for Ramadan prayer when they ended up in a dispute with a man driving in a auto, Wright told CNN. According to The New York Times, Torres got out of the vehicle and assaulted Hassanen, which is when the rest of the group ran back to the mosque.
Immediately, an All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) official reported the teen's disappearance to authorities who extensively began a searching for Hassanen.
At around 3pm, the remains of a female believed to be the teen victim were found in a pond, said the police.
On Sunday morning, a 17-year-old Muslim girl named Nabra was kidnapped, beaten to death and left in a pond in Sterling, Virginia.
During the search, according to police, an officer noticed a auto being driven suspiciously.
As of this writing, a GoFundMe page has raised over $197,000 to support Nabra's family.
She added that if evidence surfaces that does point to a hate crime, "at that point detectives would obviously take the investigation in that direction".
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Podcaster Makkah Ali wrote a thread on Twitter describing her own experiences of feeling targeted as a Muslim woman and the fear many are feeling in the wake of Hassanen's attack.
"Her friends could not find her and police were called to help", said a Fairfax Country Police Department statement.
It appears the suspect, Darwin A Martinez Torres, 22, of Sterling, got out of his auto and assaulted the victim. Authorities say the suspect, 22-year-old Darwin A. Martinez Torres, got out of the vehicle and assaulted Hassanen, whose age has been reported as 16 and 17.
WRC-TV in Washington reported that when the man got out of his auto, the girls ran away and didn't realize until later that the victim wasn't with them. He is originally from El Salvador and had no prior encounters with ICE, a spokeswoman said.
According to the Washington Post, police told Nabra's mother, Sawsan Gazzar, that Nabra was assaulted with a metal bat before being killed.
He said in an interview with The Guardian: "He followed the girls, and all of them had head cloths, meaning they are Muslim, and he had a baseball stick".
ADAMS released a statement about Nabra's murder saying, "We are devastated and heartbroken as our community undergoes and processes this traumatic event". The Council on American-Islamic Affairs found a 57 percent increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents from 2015-2016, and a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes. "It is a time for us to come together to pray and care for our youth", the mosque said in the statement.
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