Law enforcement in Fairfax County, Va. declared Sunday night that a fatal attack against a 17-year-old Muslim girl will not be investigated as a hate crime.
We are NOT investigating this murder as a hate crime. https://t.co/f6TegmdKMR pic.twitter.com/mlGzrQfiMk
— Fairfax Co. Police (@fairfaxpolice) June 19, 2017
Fairfax County Police charged Darwin Martinez Torres of Sterling, Va. Monday with the murder of Nabra Hassenen.
According to authorities, Hassenen was with a group of four or five other teenagers associated with a local mosque in Loudoun County, who were walking back from an IHOP early Sunday morning. As they walked together, a car pulled up to the group with a lone driver inside who confronted them causing all of them to disperse leaving Hassenen behind.
Hassenen went missing at that point and authorities only found her body at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon in a pond in Sterling. Martinez Torres was spotted by law enforcement driving in a suspicious manner around the search site and was arrested.
Shoyeb Hassan, the co-chair of the mosque, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, told The Washington Post that Hassenen’s group was out late because during the final 10 days of Ramadan, the mosque has extra prayers at 12 a.m. and 2 a.m. Their members usually go to McDonald’s or the 24-hour IHOP to eat prior to their fasts that begin when the sun some up.