New York police have arrested a suspect in the murder of a 60-year-old Bangladeshi woman. Nazma Khanam, who moved to the US ten years ago, was knifed to death in New York less than two blocks away from her home in Queens on the night of Aug 31. The suspect, 22-year-old Yonatan Galvez-Marin, was nabbed from the Jamaica Hills neighbourhood, where the victim’s husband found her bleeding.
Police said Galvez-Marin made statements implicating himself to stabbing the woman after she refused to hand over money. The suspect lives along the road where the incident took place, about two blocks south of the Khanam’s home. He has been charged for murder, in addition to robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. The victim’s relatives, however, have been suspecting it to be a hate crime saying no personal possessions were taken during the assault. A New York police spokesperson said that investigators do not believe that faith or ethnicity were factors in the murder.
Nazma, who taught at a school in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur, moved to the United States about 10 years ago with her husband Shamsul Haque. The couple was walking back home and Nazma was a bit ahead of her husband.
Relatives said Haque stopped to catch his breath and let his wife go on without him. He heard his wife scream before finding her mortally wounded.
