Nabra Hassanen. PHOTO: REUTERS
When the accused appeared before a judge on Friday, the father of Nabra Hassanen had to be restrained as he shouted, "You killed my daughter."
Her mother, Sawsan Gazzar, hurled a shoe at him crying, 'I'll kill you!'
Virginia police probe Muslim girl's killing as 'road rage' incident
This led to a delay in the proceedings for Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, who later renounced his right to a preliminary hearing. The case will now be forwarded to a grand jury to consider an indictment. The room inside Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court was filled with the family’s supporters.
After the hearing concluded, around 200 people demonstrated outside under the US flag, calling for 'Justice for Nabra'. Martinez Torres is charged with second-degree murder in the slaying of the 17-year-old, who was clubbed with a baseball bat while she was on her way to a mosque with friends for pre-dawn Ramazan services on June 18 in Sterling, Virginia.
When the judge called the hearing on Friday, Hassanen's parents stood up and advanced towards Martinez Torres. Hassanen's mother, Sawsan Gazzar, threw a shoe at the accused and shouted at him, making the judge clear the courtroom.
'What kind of America is this?': Muslim girls mourn death of Virginia teen
Many consider the case to be that of hate crime, but according to the police, the slaying was the result of road rage where Martinez Torres encountered Hassanen and her friends walking in the street he was driving on.
Mohmoud Hassanen, the father, previously told the Guardian: 'He killed my daughter because she is Muslim. That’s what I believe.'
Martinez Torres at first got into a fight with a teenage boy on a bike, police said. After that he got out of the car and began chasing the group of teens with a baseball bat before he assailed Nabra. Her body was later discovered by the police in a Sterling pond about 25 miles outside of Washington DC.
Martinez Torres, a citizen of El Salvador, was 'so enraged over the traffic dispute that it escalated into deadly violence,' police said.
Nabra and a group of around 15 friends were clad in abayas when they left the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, where overnight prayer services were being held during Ramazan.
Nabra did not usually choose traditional Muslim clothes, but her mother Sawsan Gazzar gave her an abaya to wear that night, according to the Washington Post. Gazzar, a detective, said Nabra stumbled over the robe and fell just before Martinez Torres struck her with a baseball bat.
Nabra's body was dumped in a pond close to where she disappeared, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Northern Virginia reported that the teen died from blunt force trauma to the head and neck.
This story originally appeared on Mail Online.
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