Eyewitnesses said that gunshots rang out Saturday afternoon near the Al-Furqan Jamia Masjid in Queens, a borough of New York City, leaving both victims lying on the ground in their own blood just a block from the mosque.
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55-year-old Imam Maulama Akonjee and 65-year-old Thara Uddin were fatally shot on Saturday in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens.
Tiffany Phillips, a spokeswoman for the New York City Police Department, said no evidence has surfaced to support a hate crime, nothing to substantiate the two were targeted due to their religion.
A motive for the shooting has not yet been determined, although the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating.
Police are still searching for the shooter, who was caught on surveillance video fleeing the scene with a gun in his hand.
People gather for a demonstration Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016, near a crime scene after an imam and his friend were fatally shot while walking home from a mosque.
Sarah Sayeed, a member of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s staff, was quoted by Fox News as saying that she understands the fear the community is facing “because I feel it myself”.
“I have no freedom”, he said.
Members of the American-Muslim community are calling for a “hate crime” investigation with some blaming prominent politicians for stoking Islamophobia.
“I understand the anger”, she said.
Some of those quoted in Ozone Park said they saw the consequences of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which has seen him call for Muslims to be banned from entering the US.
She added: “We join Bangladeshis to condemn his killing and honour what he stood for”.
Police said the suspect had a “medium complexion”.
Letitia James, New York’s public advocate, said in a statement: “This violence is as alarming as it is senseless”.
Members of the community said they had felt animosity of late, with people cursing while passing the mosque.
Patrol officer Tim Smith, 31, was killed while responding to a call about a suspicious person near an intersection in southern Georgia, police said.
“It’s a hate crime”, said Millat Uddin, a resident who is not related to the victim.
“It’s a great misery”.
He remembered the imam as a good man who only a day earlier had delivered a eulogy at the mosque.
Akonjee’s daughter, Naima Akonjee, said the Queens Imam did not “have any problems with anyone”, according to AP. “(And) a very helpful guy”, Mohammed Uddin, who is not a relation of Thara Uddin’s, told the wire service.
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A report by CAIR and the University of California at Berkeley released in June said the number of recorded incidents in which mosques were targeted jumped to 78 in 2015, the most since the body began tracking them in 2009.
