AP

Suspect in 4 New Mexico killings left trail of violence

Aug 12, 2022, 9:09 AM | Updated: 9:11 pm

FILE - This Aug. 9, 2020, still image taken from officer video provided by the Albuquerque Police D...

FILE - This Aug. 9, 2020, still image taken from officer video provided by the Albuquerque Police Department shows the arrest of Muhammad Syed. Syed, the main suspect in the slaying of four Muslim men in Albuquerque has committed regular acts of violence in the six years since he fled war-ravaged Afghanistan and resettled in the United States, according to police documents and court records. (Albuquerque Police Department via AP, File)

(Albuquerque Police Department via AP, File)


              FILE - A young unidentified man bows during the Dhuhr afternoon prayer at the Islamic Center of New Mexico, Sunday Aug. 7, 2022, after the fourth Muslim man was murdered in Albuquerque. Muhammad Syed, the main suspect in the slaying of four Muslim men in Albuquerque has committed regular acts of violence in the six years since he fled war-ravaged Afghanistan and resettled in the United States, according to police documents and court records.(Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)
            
              FILE - This undated file photo released by the City of Española shows Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, a planning and land use director who was killed in Albuquerque, N.M., on Aug. 1, 2022. Hussain is one of four victims in a series of killings of Muslim men in New Mexico's largest city as the deaths sent ripples of fear through the religious community nationwide. The 27-year-old urban planner had been out for his evening walk and was talking on the phone when he was gunned down. Afzaal Hussain had worked on the campaign of a New Mexico congresswoman, and police have not said how suspect Muhammad Syed knew Muhammad Afzaal Hussain. (City of Española via AP, File)
            
              FILE - This file photo released Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, by the Albuquerque Police Department shows Muhammad Syed. Syed, 51, was taken into custody Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, in connection with the killings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque, N.M., over the last nine months. Syed the main suspect in the slaying of four Muslim men in Albuquerque has committed regular acts of violence in the six years since he fled war-ravaged Afghanistan and resettled in the United States, according to police documents and court records.  (Albuquerque Police Department via AP, File)
            
              FILE - This Aug. 9, 2020, still image taken from officer video provided by the Albuquerque Police Department shows the arrest of Muhammad Syed. Syed, the main suspect in the slaying of four Muslim men in Albuquerque has committed regular acts of violence in the six years since he fled war-ravaged Afghanistan and resettled in the United States, according to police documents and court records.  (Albuquerque Police Department via AP, File)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — In the six years since he resettled in the United States from Afghanistan, the primary suspect in the slayings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque has been arrested several times for domestic violence and captured on camera slashing the tires of a woman’s car, according to police and court records.

The lengthy pattern of violence — which began not long after Muhammad Syed arrived in the states — has shocked members of the city’s small, close-knit Muslim community, some of whom knew him from the local mosque and who initially had assumed the killer was an outsider with a bias against the Islamic religion. Now, they are coming to terms with the idea that they never really understood the man.

“I think based on knowing his history now — and we didn’t before — he’s obviously a disturbed individual. He obviously has a violent tendency,” said Ahmad Assed, president of the Islamic Center of New Mexico.

Police say Syed, 51, was acquainted with his victims and was likely motivated by “interpersonal conflicts.”

He was arrested Monday night and remains in custody. Prosecutors say he is a dangerous man and plan to ask a judge next week to keep him locked up pending trial on murder charges in connection with two of the shooting deaths. Syed is also the primary suspect in the other two homicides, but police say they will not rush to charge him in those cases as long as he remains in jail and doesn’t pose a threat to the community. The married father of six has denied involvement in the killings; his defense attorneys have declined to comment.

Few details have emerged publicly about Syed’s life before he and his family came to America in 2016, but a U.S. government document obtained by The Associated Press says he graduated from Rehman Baba High School in western Kabul in 1990. Between 2010 and 2012, he worked as a cook for the Al Bashar Jala Construction Company.

In December 2012, Syed fled Afghanistan with his wife and children, the report states. The family made its way to Pakistan, where Syed sought work as a refrigerator technician. A native Pashto speaker who was also fluent in Dari, he was admitted to the United States in 2016 as a refugee.

The very next year, according to court records, a boyfriend of Syed’s daughter alleged that Syed, his wife and one of Syed’s sons pulled him out of a car and punched and kicked him before driving away. The boyfriend, who was found with a bloody nose, scratches and bruises, told police he was attacked because Syed, a Sunni Muslim, did not want his daughter in a relationship with a Shiite man.

In 2018, Syed was taken into custody after a fight with his wife about her driving. Syed told police that his wife had slapped him in the car, but she said he pulled her by the hair, threw her to the ground and made her walk two hours to their destination.

Months later, Syed allegedly beat his wife and attacked one of his sons with a large slotted metal spoon that left his hair blood-soaked, according to court documents. Syed’s wife told police everything was fine. But the son, who was the one who called them, told officers that Syed routinely beat him and his mother.

Two of the cases were dismissed after the wife and boyfriend declined to press charges. The third was dismissed after Syed completed a pretrial intervention program. In 2020, Syed was arrested after he allegedly refused to pull over for police after running a traffic light, but that case was also eventually dismissed.

“If you’re trying to understand how violence in a particular person evolves, you just have to know that he didn’t wake up last year and become a serial killer,” said former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole. “He had experience with violence. And that’s the challenge of law enforcement … to identify what is your experience with violence and when did it start?”

Syed told detectives that he’d served with the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command, a small, elite group of Afghan soldiers who fought the Taliban. He said he likes the AK-47-style weapon police found at his house because he’d used one in Afghanistan.

Yet the U.S. government profile the AP reviewed did not list any military experience, and Syed turned 40 the year the elite force was formed in 2011 — likely too old to be selected for combat in the heaviest fighting.

“That sounds a little fishy,” said Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, who served two tours in Afghanistan and is a senior fellow and military expert at the Defense Priorities think tank. He said while Syed may have been a soldier, “special forces guys are usually 22, 25 years old, maybe 30, because it is so physically demanding.”

The Syed family lives in a small duplex on the city’s south side, a working-class part of town where many of the older homes and apartments have security bars affixed to their doors and windows. The area has become a magnet for Afghan refugees and other immigrants looking to make a new home in New Mexico’s largest city.

The slayings of the four men — the first in November and the other three occurring in rapid succession over a period of less than two weeks in July and the first week of August — set off ripples of terror in Albuquerque’s Muslim community of about 4,500. Residents were afraid to go out of their homes — to the point where city officials offered to deliver meals — and some considered leaving town.

That was what Syed told investigators he was doing when he left in his Volkswagen Jetta on Sunday: heading out of state to find a safer place for his frightened family.

Police say he was, in fact, skipping town after killing Naeem Hussain just days before.

Syed is the primary suspect — but hasn’t been charged — in the death of Hussain, a 25-year-old man from Pakistan who was fatally shot on Aug. 5 in the parking lot of a refugee resettlement agency in southeast Albuquerque; and the slaying of Muhammad Zahir Ahmadi, a 62-year-old Afghan immigrant who was fatally shot in the head last November behind the market he owned in the city.

Ahmadi is the brother-in-law of the woman whose tires Syed slashed in 2020, while Syed and Hussain had known each other since 2016, police said.

Syed has been charged with murder in the deaths of Aftab Hussein and Muhammad Afzaal Hussain. Hussein, 41, was slain on the night of July 26 after parking his car in the usual spot near his home. Afzaal Hussain, a 27-year-old urban planner who had worked on the campaign of a New Mexico congresswoman, was gunned down on the night of Aug. 1 while taking his evening walk.

While Syed told police he recognized Hussein from parties in the community, it was unclear how he knew Afzaal Hussain.

Despite the violence he allegedly inflicted on his wife and children, Syed’s family is standing by him.

“My father is not a person who can kill somebody,” his daughter recently told CNN, which did not disclose her identity to protect her safety. “My father has always talked about peace. That’s why we are here in the United States. We came from Afghanistan, from fighting, from shooting.”

___

Dazio reported from Los Angeles and Watson from San Diego.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP

Image: A cargo ship is stuck under the part of the structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after ...

Associated Press

Authorities identify 2 bodies recovered at site of Baltimore bridge collapse

A major bridge in Baltimore snapped and collapsed after a container ship rammed into it early Tuesday, and several vehicles fell into the river below.

1 day ago

Photo: Mountaineer Jim Whittaker has died at 95....

Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

Lou Whittaker, among the most famous American mountaineers, has died at age 95

Lou Whittaker, a legendary American mountaineer who helped lead ascents of Mount Everest, K2 and Denali, has died at age 95.

1 day ago

File photo: Former Sen. Joe Lieberman speaks in Washington on Jan. 18, 2024....

Associated Press

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrats’ VP pick in 2000, dead at 82

Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000, has died.

2 days ago

islamic state attack...

Vanessa Gera, The Associated Press

What we know after the Islamic State group claims responsibility for Moscow massacre

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for an attack on a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed at least 133 people.

5 days ago

Moscow shooting...

The Associated Press

Russia: 60 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid; Islamic State group claims responsibility

Assailants burst into a concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing over 60 people, injuring more than 100.

7 days ago

Photo: Britain's Kate, Duchess of Cambridge visits 282 (East Ham) Squadron, RAF Air Cadets, Cornwel...

Associated Press

Kate Middleton announces she has cancer, is undergoing chemotherapy

Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, says she is undergoing chemotherapy to treat cancer. She has been out of view since Christmas.

7 days ago

Suspect in 4 New Mexico killings left trail of violence