Homes reach the edge of the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S., July 5, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
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Aug 6 (Reuters) – New Mexico police and federal agencies were investigating the killings of four Muslim men to determine whether the killings, the latest of which occurred on Friday evening, were related, while Gov. the state described them as “targeted killings.”
Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina told reporters Saturday that “a young man who is part of the Muslim community was killed.”
The name of the victim and the circumstances of the killing were not released. In the three previous cases, the victims were ambushed and shot without warning, police said.
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Medina said the killing was possibly connected to the three previous killings.
New Mexico police had previously said the three other Muslim men killed in the state’s largest city in the past nine months appeared to have been targeted because of their religion and race. Read more
“The targeted killings of Muslim residents of Albuquerque are deeply galling and totally intolerable,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tweeted Saturday afternoon. He also said he was deploying additional state troopers to Albuquerque to assist in the investigation.
Two of those slain men were members of the same mosque, which were shot and killed in Albuquerque in late July and early August. Police said there was a “strong possibility” their deaths were linked to the killing of an Afghan immigrant in November.
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, a planning director for the city of Española who came to the United States from Pakistan, was killed Monday outside his Albuquerque apartment complex, while Aftab Hussein , 41, was found dead of gunshot wounds on July 26 near the Albuquerque International District.
Those deaths are likely linked to the shooting of Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, in a parking lot of a halal supermarket and cafe on November 7 last year, police said.
The New Mexico State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States Marshals Service are among several agencies involved in the investigation into the murders.
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Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
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