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Jordanian Killed in Texas Convenience Store Robbery
With additional reporting by Ayesha Ahmad
HOUSTON, Texas, Nov 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Jordanian man was shot to death Wednesday evening at a local gas station during what police described as a robbery, news agencies reported Friday.
Authorities have identified the Jordanian store clerk shot to death Wednesday as Ismail Matalkah, 36.
He was working at the Sunmart Mobil store in the 3300 block of Yellowstone near the South Freeway at 6:45 p.m. (EST) Wednesday when an unidentified black male walked up to the counter and shot him in the head, then fired at another clerk, according to police reports.
News reports said that two other Jordanians were wounded in the incident, but a spokesman for the Houston police department confirmed that the police report's information, stating that only one other clerk was fired at and was not injured, came directly from investigators.
Matalkah was transported by paramedics to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where he died a short time later, the
Houston Chronicle online reported.
After taking the store's cash register, the man ran out the door and got into a gray sedan with another male. Police reports described the vehicle as a two-door, older model Oldsmobile Cutlass or Buick Regal.
Jordan's official Petra news agency, which carried the report late Thursday, said the shooting might have been linked to anti-Arab attacks that have followed the deadly September 11 strikes, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Petra added that an investigation by local authorities is underway to establish the motives behind the killing.
"It's being investigated, but right now it seems that robbery was the whole motive," police spokesman John Leggio told IslamOnline. "From the initial investigation, it does not appear to be a hate crime… He was looking for money."
Leggio said that a large number of convenience stores in the Houston area are owned or run by Jordanians and Pakistanis, and that past violent incidents at such stores seem to reflect "just a convenience store being robbed" rather than deliberate targeting of ethnic or religious groups.
But he added that it was certainly something the police investigation, which is still pending, will look into.
"Because we have state laws that prohibit that kind of behavior [targeting ethnic or religious groups], we would look at it," he said.
No arrests have been made so far. Houston police asked for the public's help Thursday in finding the gunman.
Several of the store's patrons said they were shocked when they heard the news of what had happened.
"I thought they [were] nice guys," customer Enoch Gibson said, quoted by Click2Houston.com. "They [were] really nice. They would let you get things sometimes on credit."
"Very surprised, because he was a nice person," customer Patricia Houston told Click2Houston. "I don't think it's right for somebody to be taking somebody's life like that."
Police described the suspect as a dark-complexioned, bearded black male, about 5'9" to 5'11" in height. The suspect's image was captured on surveillance video and is being released by homicide investigators.
Police asked anyone with information on the case to contact the Houston Police Department's Homicide Division at (713) 308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at (713) 222-TIPS.
The large and diverse Muslim and Arab communities in the United States experienced both America's tragedy and the nation's misdirected rage in the days following the deadly September 11 attacks on Washington and New York.
Muslim and Arab groups nationwide have reported death threats by e-mail and phone to their own organizations. They have also suffered incidents of vandalism of Islamic centers and Muslim-owned businesses, threats against mosques and Islamic schools and violence directed at innocent citizens who "appear" Middle Eastern or Muslim.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported close to a thousand incidents of harassment or hate crimes nationally in the five weeks following the attacks.
And at least three - only one of whom was actually Muslim - lost their lives to hate crimes after the attacks.
Many U.S. government officials, including Congressman David Bonior (D-Mich.), whose constituency includes one of the largest Arab-American populations in the country, issued statements condemning an anti-Muslim backlash.
"I come from Michigan, home to hundreds of thousands of Arab-Americans and American Muslims," Bonior said. "Already, leaders of the community there - patriotic Americans who every day give so much to this country, who have condemned these attacks, and who are as sickened by the carnage as everyone else - have been getting death threats.
"Such hateful prejudice offends us all."
Three days after the attacks, Congress also issued a resolution, H. Con. Res. 227, with Senate concurring, condemning attacks on Muslim- and Arab-Americans and declaring that in the process of investigation, the civil liberties of those and other groups should be protected.
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