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Iraqi woman beaten in her CA home has died
Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, was taken off life support Saturday, said the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that advocates for Muslim civil liberties.
She had been on life support since Wednesday when her teenage daughter found her unconscious in the living room of their home in El Cajon in San Diego County.
"During the initial stages of this investigation, a threatening note was discovered very close to where the victim was found," Lt. Mark Coit of the El Cajon police said.
Authorities would not specify what the note said. But Alawadi's daughter said it threatened the family to go back to Iraq and called them "terrorists."
Police said a similar note was left outside the family home earlier in the month, but the family did not report it.
"A week ago they left a letter saying, 'This is our country, not yours, you terrorists,'" the daughter, Fatima Al Himidi told CNN affiliate KGTV. "So my mom ignored that, thinking (it was) kids playing around, pranking. And so the day they hurt her, they left it again and it said the same thing."
Hanif Mohebi, executive director of CAIR's San Diego chapter, said the family came to the United States from Iraq in the mid-1990s. He did not know when they moved to El Cajon, which has one of the nation's largest Iraqi community.
Alawadi and her husband have three daughters and two sons, ranging in age from 8 to 17, Mohebi said.
Fatima Al Himidi said nothing was stolen from the house, leading her to believe the attack on her mother motivated by hate.
"Why did you take my mother away from me? You took my best friend away from me," she said, choking with tears, in an interview with CNN affiliate ***. "Why? Why did you do it? I want to know. Answer me that."
Police would not say whether they were treating the case as a hate crime, saying they were "exploring all aspects of this investigation."
"Evidence thus far leads us to believe this is an isolated incident," Coit said in a statement.
But social media users quickly compared Alawadi's death to that of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, calling both hate crimes, and drawing a parallel between a hijab and a hoodie.
Martin was killed last month as he walked back to his father's fiancee's house in Sanford, Florida, after a trip to the convenience store. Police say he was shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who said he was acting in self-defense and has not been charged.
The teen was unarmed, carrying a bag of Skittles candy and an iced tea, and was wearing a hoodie.
On Sunday morning, the authors of the parenting blog, Momstrology, tweeted: "A teen murdered for wearing hooded sweater. An Iraqi woman beaten to death for wearing a head scarf. Our hearts ache for you."
Re: Iraqi woman beaten in her CA home has died
Will this generate the same attention as the Trayvon case? Probably not. The victim is a woman. And she's not Christian.
This is so awful. Those poor kids. I really really hope they catch this person/people.
And why do minorities have to race to see whose deaths get more coverage. Both of these should be getting coverage.
I haven't read that anywhere. DV from whom?
sadly, the husband. One is horrible. The other is terrible. Nobody wins.
The CNN article mentions her husband; I noticed that the blurb about it in the LA Times (on page A32, after we've learned about marijuana cultivation, a theater that might close, and race horse deaths, but I digress) didn't mention him at all. It also said the police had not yet labeled it a hate crime...I don't know whether to take that as a "there could be something more" or incompetence on behalf of the police/investigators.
It could also be space aliens.
No really. Where are you getting this DV angle. There's nothing in the article above to suggest that.
I was thinking when I read this article, 'where was the husband? Shouldn't he be a suspect?'
Because it seems odd to me that a xenophobe would commit a crime of hatred against just one member of the family. Of all the people he could have targeted, he viciously beats the mother to death? Not the father or the son, the more stereotypical image of a terrorist?
The note sounds like a cover for a murder to me.
Weird because my first thought was it would be a soldier. Sad that my mind went there but that was where it went.
Mine may have leapt towards domestic violence because of another recent story - the one where the father and son set up the daughters to die in a car "accident" because they'd become too Americanized.
An article I read said she was killed after her husband took the younger kids to school. Maybe whoever did this figured it would be easier to attack and kill the woman than the man? (re: why kill the mom and not the man who would be more of a "terrorist")
I don't buy the supposed DV angle at all.