The U.S. state of Indiana witnessed execution style shootings of three young Muslims in the past week.
Law enforcement officials identified the bodies of Mohamed Taha Omar, 23, Adam Mekki, 20, and Muhannad Tairab, 17 on Wednesday in the evening to the house where two of the young men lived.
Fort Wayne police had said that the murders didn’t appear to be gang related.
Just north of Indianapolis lives 20-year-old student Eidi Mohamed, who’s also an employee for an interfaith organisation that remembers all three of the Sudanese boys in middle school as “really into sports, specifically soccer.”
“There are a few news channels here covering but it really isn’t getting attention like the Chapel Hill shooting” he went on to say.
Asked whether or not the area has a history of overt racism towards Blacks or Muslims, Mohamed recalled, “I’ve always heard about racist things going on in Fort Wayne, parts of Fort Wayne have a lot of African Americans and African immigrants.”
In a report from The Journal Gazette, Police Chief Garry Hamilton and Public Safety Director Rusty York both said, “We’re pretty certain they weren’t targeted due to that”, after questions about religious implication of the killing and that the house was at that moment a “party house.”
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According to The Journal Gazette, York also added about the execution style killing, “There could’ve been a disturbance in the house or an argument of some kind. We just don’t know.”
Mustafa Kedio, father of Mohamed Taha commented, “Right now I can’t say it’s a hate crime” and “The Fort Wayne Police Sheriff reported that it wasn’t in anyway related to any gang activity.”
Mr Kedio recalled just finding out recently that, “Taha had been out of college for the last two semesters because of not being able to pay and in search of work.”
“I think he was ashamed to tell me, but I would have paid for him,” he added.
Mr Kedio is a former cab driver in Chicago who recently began a new job at a construction company.
He insisted “my boy and the other two have never been involved with gangs and they do not have one thing in any of their records.”
