As 2001 wore on, more possible hate crimes continued apace in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Fifty-one-year-old Abdo Ali Ahmed originally hailed from Yemen, but had lived in the US for thirty-five years, and was an American citizen. He had worked as a farm laborer in the rural agricultural community of Reedley, California until 1987, at which point he had saved enough money to purchase and open his own convenience store, where he worked long hours seven days a week. He had a wife, Fatima, and six children; most of the family lived in a house behind the store.
Not long after the events of 9/11, Abdo had, like many Muslims and people of Middle Eastern appearance, been the target of death threats. In fact, only a few days before he was murdered, someone left a threatening note on the windshield of his car in the parking lot of the Save Mart supermarket where he’d been shopping. Abdo had thrown the note away and gone about his business, unwilling to give in to intimidation.
On September 29th, though, either the note writer or someone else made good on the threat. At a little past four in the afternoon, two young men walked into Abdo’s store and shot him three times in the torso before fleeing the premises in a vehicle reportedly containing two more teenagers. No money was stolen from the store, indicating that the motive had not been robbery.
Abdo managed to stagger to the Hawg Jawz bar next door for help, but collapsed on the floor and died before paramedics could arrive.
Witnesses described the assailants as four youths, possibly Hispanic, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. The vehicle they fled the scene in was as a white sedan of unknown make and model.
In the wake of the slaying, the Yemeni Consulate offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information, and authorities began urging Arab-Americans and anyone of Middle Eastern descent to report any instances of threatening behavior. Despite this, more killings would soon follow, and the murder of Abdo Ali Ahmed remains unsolved nearly two decades later.
Crime Immemorial 