Hours after mourners gathered to remember a Queens imam and his assistant who were gunned down in broad daylight on an Ozone Park street corner over the weekend, the NYPD announced that they had arrested the alleged shooter.
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On Tuesday, Imam Akonjee’s son and Mr. Uddin’s brother met with authorities at the Queens district attorney’s office while Mr. Morel awaited a court appearance. He’s being held without bail. In court, prosecutors said Morel admitted he owned the Trailblazer.
Mr Akonjee, 55, and Mr Uddin, 64, were shot in the head as they walked after prayers in the borough of Queens on Saturday. “I don’t understand how he could have done anything like this”, he said.
Police say Morel is the man seen on this surveillance video running away from the crime scene near 79th Street and Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park. “We strongly believe they were targeted due to their Muslim wear”. Both men were later pronounced dead.
“While we do not yet know the motivation for the murders of Maulama Akonjee and Thara Uddin, we do know that our Muslim communities are in the perpetual crosshairs of bigotry”, the mayor said.
Family members of the victims at the courthouse Tuesday said they knew why the men died.
“Everybody is very upset”, Uddin said, adding that he believes it was a hate crime.
“This is a awful crime he did”, Uddin’s brother, Mashuk Uddin, added.
First-degree murder has such a stiff maximum sentence that designating the slayings as a hate crime might not have a practical effect on sentencing on all counts, officials said. He faces up to life in prison in the killings, if convicted.
Morel had been questioned by police following his arrest on charges related to a hit-and-run traffic accident on Saturday, the day of the shootings.
The cyclist took down part of the plate and detectives were able to match it to Morel. That’s when the suspect allegedly rammed a detective’s auto several times in a brief escape attempt before being arrested. Cops located the SUV within a mile of the hit-and-run crash.
Although the police have not disclosed any possible motive behind the murders yet, sources claim the suspect was settling a score in a feud between the area Muslims and Hispanics.
A clear motive still hasn’t been ascertained, but cops arrested a suspect named Oscar Morel in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn around 10 PM Sunday.
The surveillance video of the horrific murders showed a suspect, now believed to be Morel, shooting the two men in head.
A witness also identified him in a police line, according to the Queens DA.
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“He was a nice guy”. Akonjee and another man died in a fatal shooting Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016, as they left the Al-Furqan Jame Masjid mosque in the Queens borough of NY after prayers.
