A man has been charged in connection with the murder of a teenage girl who was reported missing early Sunday morning after leaving a mosque in the Sterling, Va., area. Fairfax County police later found what they believe to be the remains of the missing girl in a nearby pond, according to the Associated Press.
Police said Monday that the case is not being investigated as a hate crime, according to The Washington Post.
The Post reports that relatives and members of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) mosque identified the girl as 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen. Shoyeb Hassan, an ADAMS member, told the Post that Nabra was walking with a group of friends to IHOP after leaving the mosque, which offers late night prayers during the last 10 days of Ramadan, a holy month of fasting and prayer observed by millions of Muslims around the world.
As the teens were walking to IHOP, they were reportedly confronted by a motorist, and they ran to the mosque for protection, but Nabra was reportedly left behind. The group of teenagers reported that Nabra was missing, and an ADAMS personnel notified authorities, who began an investigation to find the missing girl, the Post reports.
According to BBC, Nabra was assaulted by the driver, 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres, who has been charged with murder.
Hassan told the Post that members frequently go to IHOP or McDonald’s before beginning their fast at sunrise, which is what Nabra and her friends were doing Sunday.
Nabra’s mother, Sawsan Gazzar, told the Post that if she would’ve known that her daughter planned to walk to IHOP from the mosque so late at night, she wouldn’t have allowed it—but that her daughter and her friends had walked safely from the mosque late at night last year.
She told the Post that she thinks her daughter was targeted because of “the way she was dressed and the fact that she’s Muslim.”
Nabra was the oldest of four daughters and was a diligent student, as described by her mother. A resident in the family’s apartment complex told the Post that Nabra was a “daddy’s girl” who was close to her father.
The murder of Nabra is just one of the recent acts of hostility that have shaken the Muslim community during the celebration of Ramadan. On Sunday night, a number of people were injured when a van drove into a crowd near a mosque in London after late-night prayers.