Fear turns to shock among Albuquerque Muslims as police say the shooter is a Muslim
Businesses were closed and people skipped prayer services after the shooting deaths of four Muslim men, three of them in the past two weeks. Now, the fear has given way to confusion over a motive.
The killings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque had already shaken the city's small Muslim community, prompting businesses to close and residents to temporarily move away amid fears of a deadly spate of Islamophobic hate crimes.
Then came Tuesday's news: The suspect, police say, is a 51-year-old man named Muhammad Syed, who is Muslim himself and whose motive may have been related to "interpersonal conflict."
"You would expect that learning that a suspect is found and has been detained, it would feel, the 23-year-old vice president of the University of New Mexico's Muslim Student Association.
