STERLING, Va. (AP) — Police in Virginia charged a 22-year-old man with killing a teenage girl who was reported missing after she and her friends left a mosque early Sunday.
Fairfax County police charged Darwin Martinez Torres with murder after they found what they believe is the 17-year-old girl’s body in a pond Sunday afternoon.
Police spokeswoman Tawny Wright said the girl had been walking with friends when she got into a dispute with a man in a car early Sunday. The man assaulted her and she became separated from her friends. The girl’s name was not immediately released.
Police said they arrested Torres after a search.
The teenager had been participating in at a sleepover at a religious institution that authorities did not identify. But the All Dulles Area Muslim Society confirmed in a news release that the teens were affiliated with the mosque.
“We are devastated and heartbroken as our community undergoes and processes this traumatic event,” the society said in the news release. “It is a time for us to come together to pray and care for our youth.” It said the society was enlisting licensed counselors to assist anyone in need.
Police said they looked into whether the murder was a hate crime but said they found no evidence it was.
Ironically, the killer’s first name is “Darwin”. Definitely from the shallow end of the gene pool, killing a 17 year old girl…
Something else to this story. I’m wondering if the teen girl maybe had a relationship with the 22-yo man at one time. No evidence of hate as a motivator.
Seriously TPM? That’s what you are going with? This is unbelievable clickbait.
The headline clearly insinuates that this is motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry, but it sounds more like a domestic incident. Not that it is any less tragic, but the title is far more provocative than the facts seem to bear out at this point. (“Police said they looked into whether the murder was a hate crime but said they found no evidence it was.”)
Also, “The man assaulted her and she became separated from her friends.” That’s it? That’s all we know? No one talked to these friends and asked “why did you leave your teenage friend to be assaulted on her own?”
EDIT: So I went to the actual AP story and this is what it says “According to WRC-TV in Washington, the teen fell as the girls ran, and only later did they realize that she was not among them.” (This raises many more questions for me. Why did they feel the need to run? How many friends were there? How do you not know you left someone behind in a potentially dangerous situation? If they were running, that might mean they didn’t know the man, and it could be a hate crime, etc.)
Also, the AP headline: MURDER CHARGE FOR VIRGINIA MAN IN ATTACK ON MUSLIM GIRL. Still some insinuation, but TPM adding “near Virginia mosque” is just clickbait BS.
Either way, the girl is dead and no longer with us.
If it is another Muslim hate crime then its time to make examples of the hateful.
This can not continue!
Not one of TPM’s finest hours, was it?
Reading between the lines it seems the crime is of the far more common, though no less terrible, love-struck stalker variety.
22 year old man kills 17 year old girl known to him when both have same religious affiliation? Not exactly the feeling you get from reading the headline, is it.