Muslim advocates are calling for the New York City Police Department to investigate the stabbing death of a 60-year-old woman in Queens on Wednesday night as a hate crime. He was not able to save her in time.
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“Her husband was behind her one and a half blocks away and he didn’t see nothing”, Mohammed Rahman, a nephew of the victim, told the local television station. “He didn’t realise somebody stabbed his wife”.
DNAinfo reports the stabbing may have been a botched robbery. Police say she had a stab wound to her torso and was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Sources said it was unknown if the attacker had made off with any of Nazma’s belongings. He was walking with her, but he reportedly has asthma and had to slow down and fell behind her. Authorities say he found her with the knife still in her chest, and her last words were “someone just killed me”.
“This neighborhood, it’s never happened like this”, Rahman said. “I’m living here, like, six years”.
On Thursday morning, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said that it doesn’t appear to be a hate crime.
Khanam’s death comes three weeks after a NY man allegedly shot and killed a Queens imam and his friend in broad daylight, an incident that has kept the city’s Muslim community on edge.
In that case, the victims were wearing religious attire but police have not commented on whether the shootings were a hate crime.
The slayings happened about five miles from where Nazma was killed.
The couple have three children and one of them lives in NY.
Their two children live in Bangladesh. After that, the body will be sent back to Bangladesh for burial. Khanam’s husband is also a retired educator.
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“Because of the recent killings of Muslims in Queens, and because of the growing number of anti-Muslim incidents nationwide resulting from the increasing Islamophobia in American society, we urge the NYPD to investigate a possible bias motive for this murder”, said CAIR-New York executive director Afaf Nasher.
