Detectives searched through their data and found an SUV of the same model was reportedly involved in a hit-and-run crash with a cyclist three miles away in Brooklyn, not long after the shooting. Around 10 p.m. on Sunday, a man started to get into the auto. “He was there just prior to that, we have him on video about eight minutes prior to the homicide”. “And this is when we all have to come together”, Comptroller Scott Stringer said.
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“We believe an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us”, he said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a statement on Sunday assuring the city that the NYPD will bring the gunman to justice. Since the killings, a number of Muslims said they believe the slayings were hate crimes.
Police say the men were attacked from behind, leaving Uddin to believe his uncle and the imam were targeted due to their faith.
Maulama Akonjee, 55, was a Muslim “Imam” or a worship leader, and was walking alongside his friend Thara Uddin, 65, and both were dressed in full Muslim garb as they exited the mosque in Queens.
“The perpetrator of these senseless killings must be swiftly apprehended and face the full force of the law”, Afaf Nasher, executive director of the NY chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.
“That’s not what America is about”, a local resident Khairul Islam, 33, told the New York Daily News.
Morel was arrested outside a Brooklyn flat after he intentionally rammed his vehicle into an unmarked police cruiser trying to block him in, Mr Boyce said.
Police then watched the auto until a man entered it around 10 p.m. Sunday.
Hundreds gathered near the mosque to hold a mass prayer service for the victims and to demand justice for the murders.
The authorities have not revealed a motive for the killings, though Mr Boyce said the possibility that the murders were a hate crime is “certainly on the table”.
“Right now we can’t explain why he was there”, Boyce said.
Earlier Monday, about 1,000 people gathered at an Islamic funeral service for Akonjee, 55, and Uddin, 64, where emotions ran high.
Mr. Akonjee was the widely-liked imam at the Al-Furqan Jame Mosque in the Ozone Park neighborhood.
Akonjee, who was married and the father of three, was a religious leader who came to NY four years ago and who, according to his colleagues, had gained the respect of the community and had no problems with anyone. Now his wife and two of his children will fly back with his body to Bangladesh for a burial Tuesday morning, said Sayed Ahmed, a family friend.
“I have never felt this kind of tension”, said Nizam Uddin, 57, a taxi driver who said he knew both the cleric and his associate. “You can’t imagine what we’ve lost”.
“There is a real sense of feeling victimized and feeling targeted amongst Muslims across the entire nation, said Chaudry during a Canadian TV news interview”.
At the funeral, the divisive nature of the presidential race and GOP candidate Donald Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants was on the minds of many.
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Detectives walked a handcuffed Oscar Morel out of the 107th Precinct in Flushing into a waiting unmarked sedan just after 10:30pm Monday.
