Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina is again urging the city’s Muslim community to be vigilant after another Muslim man was found dead on Saturday. He is the fourth person killed in the New Mexico city under similar circumstances since November 2021.
Police say they have reason to believe the murders were committed by the same person or persons. The latest killing comes just two days after the Albuquerque Police Department held a press conference with the FBI to announce the possible connection.
Although authorities declined to release specific evidence, they pointed to the fact that all the victims shared a common race and religion.
“Our city suffered another tragic loss overnight. Another young man who was part of the Muslim community was killed. As with the previous three homicides that we mentioned on Thursday, there is reason to believe that this death is related to these shootings,” Medina said at a news conference Saturday afternoon.
“We must ask the Muslim community especially to be vigilant. Look out for each other. If you see something, say something,” he said.
The city has stepped up patrols in response to the violence. In addition to the FBI’s assistance, officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the U.S. Marshals Service are assisting in the investigation. Police are also consulting with leaders from the Islamic Center of Albuquerque, they said.
Asked if he would say there was a serial killer on the loose, Gilbert Gallegos, Albuquerque police communications director, said it was too soon to use the phrase. Nor can Gallegos yet say whether the killings qualify as hate crimes.
Police did not immediately release the name of the person who died last or the manner of his death.
But they said Thursday that all three previous killings were shootings and the victims were ambushed.
Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, was shot in the head on November 7 and found in the parking lot of the halal grocery store and cafe he owned with his brother. The siblings fled Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Aftab Hussain, 41, also from Afghanistan, died of gunshot wounds on the evening of July 26. His colleagues at Flying Star, a local restaurant chain, told local news station KRQE that he was a “hard-working prankster with a heart of generosity” who once put all the tips he earned in two weeks into a donation jar for a co-worker in need . He planned to marry and build a life in New Mexico, his colleagues said.
Muhammad Afzal Hussain, 27, was shot in the head in the parking lot outside his apartment building on August 1. He came to the U.S. from Pakistan in 2017 to earn a master’s degree in public planning from the University of New Mexico, the Albuquerque Gazette reported. Two years later, Hussain was elected president of the Graduate and Professional Student Association. At the time of his death, he was working in local government in the town of Española, where colleagues called him a “rising star,” local news station KOB4 reported.
Tahir Gauba, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Albuquerque, told The Santa Fe New Mexican, a local newspaper, that the killings have upset people.
“We have never felt so much fear [our] community,” Gauba said outside the outlet. “I’ve never seen so much fear in my own family.”