LAST week two girls aged 13 and 15 jumped into the car of 66-year-old Mohammad Anwar, an Uber Eats driver in Washington DC, while he was out of the vehicle making a delivery. They were armed with a Taser.
The subsequent events were caught on video. Anwar shouts, ‘This is my car!’ as he attempts to get back into the Honda. One of the girls, who is behind the wheel, accelerates rapidly leaving Anwar hanging halfway out of the car, stuck between the driver’s seat and the door. At the next intersection, the Honda veers and crashes between two parked cars. The impact throws Anwar out of the vehicle and he lands on the ground. There is no further sign of movement from him.
Two National Guards, who happen to be at the scene, remove the girls from the car and walk past Anwar, lying on the sidewalk, without looking at him or trying to help him.
Anwar died later in hospital from his injuries. The Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department described the incident as an attempted carjacking and confirmed that the suspects had used a Taser on the driver.
The girls, whose names have not been released because they are minors, have been charged with murder and armed carjacking and they remain in police custody.
What is surprising, then, about another senseless murder on a US street? Well, for a start, some of the public responses have been bizarre.
First up is Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, a staunch Democrat who last year changed the name of a plaza outside the White House to ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza’. She also facilitated a two-block-long street mural which declares ‘Black Lives Matter’.
Anwar, a Pakistani immigrant who arrived in the US in 2014, and who had a wife, three children and four grandchildren, elicited no such sentiment from Bowser or anyone from her office.
There was no public comment or tearful condolence to his grieving family, but instead a public service video on how to prevent carjacking.
Bowser tweeted: ‘Auto theft is a crime of opportunity. Follow these steps to reduce the risk of your vehicle becoming a target. Remember the motto, #ProtectYourAuto.’
Some commentators have called her ‘inhumane’ and ‘tone deaf’ and the offending tweet has been deleted. Others, such as Hunter Walker, a White House correspondent for Yahoo News, tweeted that mainstream conservatives [were] widely sharing this story . . . In some cases, they’re copying [sic] videos taken directly from the far right – explicitly racist voices including popular Gab and Telegram accounts.’
CNN decided to share the news of Anwar’s death on Twitter in an obtuse manner: ‘Police said the girls, 13 and 15, assaulted an Uber Eats driver with a Taser while carjacking him, which led to an accident in which he was fatally injured.’
Observers of the incident and commentators who have viewed the video suggest a different assessment. They say that what they saw was no ‘accident’ but a callous and wanton act.
Clearly it would be inappropriate to speculate on the nature of Anwar’s demise or the accused girls’ culpability until investigations are complete. In the meantime, though, it is surely worth remarking on the silence of the woke commentariat about the senseless death of an ordinary, hard-working man, trying to make an honest living.
Can it be that the MSM are reluctant to condemn such a crime because the accused girls are both African-American?
