Suspect is reportedly Hispanic. You can see the video of the shooting below, doesn’t look like a robbery. Lot of speculation from it being a ‘hit’ to it having something to do with prior difficulties between Muslims and Hispanics in the neighborhood. Right now, no official motive.
Via Fox News:
A man suspected of gunning down an imam and his friend as they left a New York City mosque was denied bail Tuesday afternoon during his first court appearance since being charged with murder.
Police have yet to release a motive behind the killings.
Oscar Morel, 35, is charged with first and second-degree murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the Saturday afternoon executions of Imam Maulana Alauddin Akonjee and Thara Uddin near the Al-Fuquan Jame Masjid mosque in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens.
Prosecutors on Tuesday said the bullets used to kill Akonjee and Uddin came from a gun police recovered at Morel’s Brooklyn home on Monday night.
Morel was taken into custody late Sunday night outside a Brooklyn apartment as he approached a vehicle that police had linked to an unrelated hit-and-run that matched the description of the shooting suspect’s getaway vehicle.
“Detectives from the Fugitive Task Force Unit approached the car, and then he rammed the detectives’ car several times in an effort to get away,” said Robert Boyce, the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives. “He was placed under arrest without any further incident and brought back to the precinct for more debriefing.”
Boyce said Morel was seen on surveillance video fleeing the area of the shooting in a black GMC Trailblazer. About 10 minutes later, a car matching that description struck a bicyclist in Brooklyn.
You can see he just runs up right behind them and shoots them, they were both shot in the head.