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Pakistani Grocer Shot Dead in Texas
DALLAS, Texas, Sept 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In what appears to be
the first casualties of the backlash from Tuesday's attacks on the Word Trade Center and Pentagon, a Muslim grocer in Dallas, Texas, and a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona, has been shot dead.
Despite appeals for calm and tolerance by the nation's leaders, Muslims, and anyone resembling them, are being targeted.
Waqar Hasan Choudhry, 40, a convenience store owner, in Pleasant Grove, a Dallas suburb, was shot dead at his store Saturday night. His relatives told the press that local detectives informed them they believe it was motivated by blind revenge and there was no evidence of robbery.
Choudhry, married, and a father to four girls, was originally from Karachi and moved to America 10 years ago. He is survived by his wife and four girls.
Officially, police are saying little. "We don't know who did it or why, it's too early in the investigation," Sergeant Gary Kilpatrick of the Dallas police homicide department said.
"At this point, we can't prove or disprove anything. We're looking for witnesses and checking the evidence."
In Mesa, Arizona, four unidentified assailants in two trucks drove to the gas station of Balbir Singh Sodhi and shot him dead Saturday night, Rajwant Singh, president of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, said.
But Mesa police spokesman Sgt. Mike Goulet said Sodhi was killed by a single gunman who later went to a second station and fired repeatedly.
The gunman also reportedly fired several shots at a private residence.
The owners of the second gas station, Ali Saad and Saad Saad, said that the clerk working at the time of the attack ducked as bullets hit a tobacco rack inside the store. The clerk was not injured.
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