Darwin Martinez-Torres’ Family Responds To Alleged Murder Of Nabra Hassanen

The family of Darwin Martinez-Torres, the man accused of killing Muslim teen Nabra Hassanen, said they were shocked and confused by the situation. Martinez-Torres was arrested in Virginia Sunday after Hassanen’s remains were found in a lake near his apartment.

Police said Hassanen and a group of friends were walking to a mosque in the early hours of the morning Sunday when they were approached by an irate Martinez-Torres inside his car. Martinez-Torres got in an altercation with the group, who then scattered. He allegedly abducted Hassanen in the ensuing confusion, assaulted her with a baseball bat and dumped her body in the pond.

Read: Nabra Hassanen’s Death May Have Been An Incident Of ‘Road Rage’

“I can’t believe it,” Martinez-Torres’ aunt, who asked not to be identified, told reporters at his court arraignment Monday. “He is nice with my mom. He is nice with my family. He’s a nice dad.”

The aunt described Martinez-Torres as a Salvadoran citizen with a job in construction, a 4-year-old son and a girlfriend. She said he briefly attended school in the United States and had no prior connection to Hassanen. The aunt also noted that Martinez-Torres was at a nearby park with her mother just hours before the killing took place.

Police arrested Martinez-Torres Sunday after finding him driving suspiciously in the area where the confrontation originally took place. They did not say what led them to be suspicious or what evidence they recovered.

He was arraigned Monday in a Fairfax County court and was expected to appear in court again July 19. Martinez-Torres was appointed a public defender and spoke through a Spanish translator when answering questions put to him by a judge in county jail. United States Immigration officials reportedly requested that a “detainer” be put on him, indicating they might be interested in deportation at some point in the future.

It's unclear if Martinez-Torres entered a plea.

“He killed her because she’s a Muslim,” Hassanen’s father told reporters Monday. “This is what I tell the detective. Why was he running behind the kids wearing Islamic clothes with a baseball stick? Why, when my daughter fell down, why did he hit her? For what? We don’t know this guy. He doesn’t know us.”

Police, however, said Hassanen’s death was not being investigated as a hate crime at this point. Instead, it was being investigated as an incident of road rage.

“There was no indication of any racial slurs or any back and forth other than a verbal argument,” Police Lieutenant Bryan Holland said Monday.

Read: Nabra Hassanen’s Father Speaks Out: ‘He Killed Her Because She’s A Muslim’

Fairfax County police spokesperson Julie Parker said during a news conference Monday that it appeared Martinez-Torres became “enraged over a traffic encounter.”

“His anger over that earlier encounter then led to violence when he hit Nabra with a baseball bat,” she said.