NEW YORK – An elderly Muslim woman was stabbed to death in Jamaica Hills, Queens, on Wednesday night, August 31, adding to Muslim fears after an imam and his assistant were killed in execution-style three weeks ago in the same city.
“Her husband was behind her one and a half blocks away and he didn’t see nothing,” Mohammed Rahman, a nephew of the victim, told local television station PIX 11, International Business Times reported on Thursday, September 1.
“She’s just crying or something, ‘Somebody kill me, somebody kill me,’ and he’s coming to help. He didn’t realize somebody stabbed his wife.”
The victim, Nazma Khanam, 60, was walking around 9 pm in Jamaica Hills, Queens, when she was stabbed.
She was taken to a Jamaica Hospital but pronounced dead
Khanam’s husband was reportedly a block behind her when the stabbing took place.
Nazma Khanam, 60, was stabbed during an attempted robbery in Jamaica Wednesday night. (Family photo)
Khanam was wearing her traditional Muslim garb and her family reportedly believes the attack may have been hate crime.
Though no property of the victim was reported missing till now, police ruled out that the attack was a hate crime, saying it may have been an attempted robbery.
Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said there was no evidence to call the incident a hate crime.
“I don’t think as a 60-year-old woman she has any enemies,” Jamaica Hills resident Durud Miah told NBC 4.
The NYPD Muslim Officers Society confirmed Khanam was the aunt of an officer on Twitter early Thursday morning.
“Very sad to announce the death of the aunt of our member PO Kabir,” the organization tweeted. “Let’s catch the perp.”
Khanam’s death comes three weeks after a New York man shot and killed a Queens imam and his assistant in daylight in an execution-style murder.