VIRGINIA: A 17-year-old American Muslim girl was beaten and abducted after leaving a mosque in Virginia on Sunday by a man who police later arrested on suspicion of murder after her body was found dumped in a pond, authorities said.
The attack spurred an outpouring of grief and horror in a Muslim community that has been gathering to pray at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque about 30 miles outside Washington in observance of the last 10 days of Ramadhan.
The attack happened early on Sunday after the victim and several friends walking outside the mosque got into a dispute with a motorist in the community of Sterling, the Fairfax County Police Department said.
At one point, the motorist got out of his car and assaulted the girl, police said. The teen was reported missing by her friends who scattered during the attack and could not find her afterwards, touching off an hours-long search by authorities in Fairfax and Loudoun counties.
At around 3 pm, the remains of a female believed to be the teen victim were found in a pond in Sterling, police said.
During the search for the missing teen, authorities stopped a motorist “driving suspiciously in the area” and arrested the driver, later identified as identified as Darwin Martinez Torres, 22. Police obtained a murder warrant that charges Torres for her death, the Fairfax County Police Department said. A police spokeswoman told reporters the attack followed some sort of dispute between the man and the girls, and authorities had not ruled out hate as a motivation for the attack. — Reuters
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