“Road rage.”That’s the explanation the mainstream media outlets and police are giving when reporting the brutal assault and murder of a 17-year-old Muslim girl in Virginia.
According to police, while driving early Sunday morning, Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, noticed a group of teenagers walking and riding bicycles. He proceeded to argue with one of them, and drove up onto the curb, enraged. He later located the group in a parking lot and chased them on foot with a baseball bat.
He beat one of them, Nabra Hassanen, to death, and stowed in his car Hassanen’s body, which was found about 3 p.m. Sunday in Loudoun County.
Fairfax County police arrested Torres in a traffic stop two hours later and charged him with murder.
Immigration officials have asked a Fairfax detention center to “hold” Torres, an El Salvador native, keeping him an additional 48 hours beyond when he might have otherwise been released.
According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Northern Virginia, Hassanen succumbed to blunt-force trauma to the head and neck in what the local Muslim community and Nabra Hassanen’s father, Mahmoud Hassanen, are deeming a hate crime.
Mahmoud Hassanen said:
“This is a hate crime. It’s racism. Getting killed because she’s Muslim.”
He continued:
“I feel sorry for the guy who take my daughter’s life. Why? We have to help each other, Muslim, Christian, Jew.”
According to Deputy Aleksandra Kowalski, a spokeswoman for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, Nabra Hassanen and four or five other teens were returning from breakfast at IHOP when Torres approached them. Every teen but Hassanen ran to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) mosque where they realized their friend was missing.
Co-chair of ADAMS, Shoyeb Hassan, said it is customary during the last 10 days of Ramadan for members to eat at the local McDonald’s or the 24-hour IHOP before starting their fast at sunrise, which is what Hassanen and her friends were doing.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Council on American Islamic Relations, told CNN:
“We’d like to hear from the witnesses to the initial attack as to whether they heard any biased statements. Even if not, why is this individual targeting a group of people dressed in Muslim attire? Would they have been targeted if they hadn’t been of a certain faith or ethnicity? These are the kinds of questions we ask.”
This attack came hours after a man drove a van into a crowd of Muslim worshipers at a London mosque also leaving late-night prayers.
Last month, two men on a train Portland were stabbed and killed after they protected two Muslim girls being harassed and threatened threats.
These incidents come at a time when one in three US Muslims fear white supremacist violence and the mainstream media implicitly normalizes anti-Muslim rhetoric by failing to address it in the same manner as it does violence against Caucasians.
Would Torres have been charged with a hate crime if he were Muslim and his victims white?
Watch this video for more information about the attack (after the jump):
Featured Image: Screenshot Via YouTube Video.