A 51-year-old Afghan man was charged Tuesday with killing two Muslim men in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and authorities said he is a suspect in the slayings of two others whose deaths have struck fear in Muslim communities across the country.
The authorities announced the arrest of Muhammad Syed a day after his arrest.
Police Chief Harold Medina made the announcement on Twitter, saying authorities had tracked down a vehicle believed to have been involved in one of the slayings in New Mexico’s largest city.
“The driver has been arrested and is our prime suspect in the murders,” the tweet read.
Investigators received information from the city’s Muslim community that Syed had come to the United States sometime in the last few years, police said.
He was arrested and taken into custody along Interstate 40 in Santa Rosa, about 110 miles east of Albuquerque.
The killings caught the attention of President Joe Biden, who said such attacks “have no place in America.” They also sent a chill through Muslim communities, where some people questioned their safety and limited their movements.
When told about the announcement, Muhammad Imtiaz Hussain, the brother of one of the victims, Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, said he was relieved but needed to know more about the suspect and the motive.
“This gives us hope that the truth will come out,” he said. “We need to know why.”
Naeem Hussain was killed on Friday night and the other three men were killed in an ambush.
Hussain, 25, was from Pakistan. His death came a few days after those of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, and Aftab Hussein, 41, also Pakistanis and members of the same mosque.
The first case involves the November killing of Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, of Afghanistan.
On Monday, authorities sought help searching for a vehicle that appeared to be the one discovered Tuesday.
Common elements in the deaths were the victims’ race and religion, authorities said, and police were trying to determine if the deaths were related.
Debbie Almontaser, a leader in the Muslim community in New York, said a friend who lives in Michigan and wears a hijab to cover her head shared with her over the weekend how nervous she was. “She says, ‘This is so scary. I’m so scared. I’m traveling alone,'” Almontaser said.
Aneela Abad, general secretary of the Islamic Center of New Mexico, described a community reeling from the killings, their grief compounded by confusion and fear of what may follow.
“We are completely shocked and we are still trying to understand and understand what happened, how and why,” he said.
Some people have avoided going out unless “absolutely necessary,” and some Muslim college students have been wondering if it’s safe to stay in the city, he said. The center has also beefed up its security.
Police initially said the same vehicle was suspected of being used in all four homicides: a dark gray or silver four-door Volkswagen that appeared to be a Jetta or Passat with dark tinted windows. But the police chief’s tweet referred only to the connection of the vehicle to a murder.
Authorities released photos hoping people could help identify the car and offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Investigators did not say where the footage was taken or what led them to suspect the car was involved in the killings. Police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said in an email Monday that the agency received information about the car but did not elaborate.
Gallegos said he couldn’t comment on what type of weapon was used in the shootings or whether police know how many suspects were involved in the violence.
Few anti-Muslim hate crimes have been recorded in Albuquerque over the past five years, according to FBI data cited by Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and a professor of criminal justice at California State University in California. Saint Bernardine. .
From 2017 to 2020, there was one anti-Muslim hate crime per year. The highest recent number was in 2016, when Albuquerque police recorded six of a total of 25 hate crimes.
That largely follows national trends, which hit the lowest numbers in a decade in 2020, only to jump 45% in 2021 in a dozen cities and states, Levin said.
Albuquerque authorities say they can’t determine whether the killings were hate crimes until they’ve identified a suspect and a motive.
It was unclear if the victims knew their attacker or attackers.
The most recent victim was found dead after police received a call of a shooting. Authorities declined to say whether the killing was carried out in a similar way to the other deaths.
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain had worked as a field organizer for a local congresswoman’s campaign.
Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury released a statement praising him as “one of the kindest, most hard-working people” she has ever met. She said the urban planner was “committed to making our public spaces work for all people and cleaning up legacy pollution.”
As land use director for the city of Española, more than 85 miles (137 kilometers) north of Albuquerque, Hussain worked to improve conditions and inclusion for disadvantaged minorities, the mayor’s office said.
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Dazio reported from Los Angeles and Fam from Winter Park, Florida. Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington and AP news researchers Rhonda Shafner and Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.