Two teenage girls have been charged with the murder of Washington D.C. UberEats driver Mohammad Anwar who was killed in a horrific carjacking last week caught on camera.
The girls, aged 13 and 15, have been charged with felony murder and armed carjacking. Anwar died after they allegedly tasered him while attempting to carjack him.
In a video played in court, one of the girls is heard screaming: “He has my phone,” as Anwar, 66, yells: “They’re trying to take my car.”
One girl admitted to going to Navy Yard station in Washington with the intent to steal a car, but she blamed the other girl for jamming the car in gear, swinging the steering wheel and crushing Anwar to death, a Metropolitan Police Department detective said.
Meanwhile, Anwar’s relatives have set up a GoFundMe to help his family. The page had raised nearly $1 million as of Tuesday after news of Anwar’s killing was shared extensively on social media.
“Mohammad Anwar was a hard-working Pakistani immigrant who came to the United States to create a better life for him and his family,” the GoFundMe reads. “He was simply at work … providing for his family, when his life was tragically taken in an appalling act of violence.”
Anwar’s family added in a statement: “The family is devastated by this senseless crime. Mohammad Anwar was a father, a grandfather, a husband, a brother, and uncle beloved by many here in the United States and in Pakistan, his birth country.”
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Anwar’s family called him “a hardworking immigrant who came to the United States in 2014, working tirelessly to build a better life for himself and his family.” “He chose happiness each day and it was infectious,” the statement said. “The loss felt by his death is immeasurable and he is missed tremendously by family and friends.”
The American Pakistani Public Affairs Committee has called on police to investigate the death as a hate crime.
“This unspeakable act is another tragic example of the hatred and violence that Muslim Americans regularly endure,” the committee said. “We demand authorities investigate this incident as a hate crime and prosecute the alleged assailants to the fullest extent of the law…
“As our nation reckons with rising incidents of hate and violence directed toward minority communities, APPAC stands in solidarity with all who fall victim to the senseless consequences of Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia, religious prejudice and oppression.”
