A man charged with murder in the death of a Muslim Virginia teen who was attacked near her mosque became “enraged” by a traffic argument with one of the girl’s friends and hit her with a baseball bat before abducting her, police said Monday. Though the slaying of Nabra Hassanen, whose body was found in a pond, raised concerns that she was targeted because she was Muslim, Fairfax County police spokeswoman Julie Parker said at a news conference that police have no reason to believe that the killing was a hate crime.
“Nothing indicates that this was motivated by race or by religion. It appears the suspect became so enraged over this traffic argument that it escalated into deadly violence,” Parker said.
Hassanen, 17, was with a group of as many as 15 teens who had left their Sterling-area mosque between Ramadan prayers to get food at a McDonald’s, Parker said. They were making their way back to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society between 3 and 4 a.m. Sunday, some walking and some riding bikes, when the suspect drove up to the group and began to argue with a male teen, Parker said. The suspect, 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres, drove up onto a curb and the group scattered, Parker said. Martinez Torres caught up with them in a nearby parking lot, got out of his car armed with a baseball bat and began chasing the group, she said.
“His anger over that earlier encounter then led to violence when he hit Nabra with a baseball bat,” Parker said.
She said he took the girl with him in his car to a nearby location, where she was assaulted a second time. Authorities later found her body in a pond. An autopsy revealed she died of blunt force trauma to the upper body, Parker said.
During an intense search for Hassanen on Sunday, an officer stopped a suspicious car and Martinez Torres was taken into custody, police said earlier. Martinez Torres was arraigned Monday and denied bail pending a July 19 court appearance. A judge appointed him a public defender, whose office declined comment. Immigration authorities put a detainer on him, saying he’s a citizen of El Salvador and there’s probable cause to believe he lacks permission to be in the U.S. Police announced earlier in the day that they were not investigating the slaying as a hate crime, which provoked deep skepticism among some American Muslims.
