Court papers filed by police in the beating death of an
Iraqi-American woman near San Diego cite her divorce plans and
daughter's apparent suicide attempt last year, but do not point to
further evidence that the murder was a hate crime.Shaima
Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, was found bludgeoned in her
rented home in a refugee community of the San Diego suburb of El Cajon
on March 21 and died of her injuries several days later, after doctors
removed her from life support.
A threatening note found at the
scene has given rise to suggestions that Alawadi may have been targeted
because of her ethnicity, though police have cautioned against drawing
that conclusion during the investigation.
According to a search
warrant affidavit filed last week and obtained by Reuters on Thursday,
a relative of Alawadi told detectives the victim had "been planning on
divorcing her husband and moving to the state of Texas." The documents
show that divorce papers were found in her car.
The whereabouts
of the victim's husband, Kassim Alhimidi, at the time of the incident,
also had not been confirmed, police said in the court papers.
The
affidavit also says that in November police responding to reports of
two people possibly having sex in a car found Alawadi's 17-year-old
daughter, Fatima Alhimidi, in a vehicle with a 21-year-old man.
After
Alawadi picked up her daughter to drive them home, the girl told her
mother, "I love you Mom," then opened the car door and jumped out while
the vehicle was still moving at 35 miles-per-hour, suffering multiple
injuries, the affidavit says.
"Police were informed by paramedics
and hospital staff that Fatima Alhimidi said she was being forced to
marry her cousin and did not want to do so, so she jumped out of the
vehicle," investigators say in the documents.
It was Alhimidi who
discovered her mother unconscious and bleeding on the floor of the
family home after an "extremely violent" attack in which the victim was
struck six or more times by a heavy object, suffering at least four
skull fractures.
POLICE SEARCH FOR EARRING
According to the
affidavit, Alhimidi told police that she heard her mother squeal,
followed by the sound of breaking glass, which she took to be her
mother dropping a plate. Ten minutes later she said she discovered her
mother on the floor, bleeding, and called 911.
Detectives
disclose in the documents that while Alhimidi was being interviewed by
police, a text message was sent to her cell phone from a caller unknown
to police that read: "The detective will find out tell them cnt talk."
The
search warrant affidavit was filed as police sought to search the home
and two cars, one registered to Alawadi and the other to her husband.
Police
said they were looking for an earring matching one found near the
victim's body apparently caked in blood, along with any evidence
relating to the threatening note and murder weapon, as well as
computers and other data storage devices.
The affidavit suggests that the weapon, possibly a tire iron, had not been recovered.
According
to the affidavit the threatening missive found at the home was a copy,
and investigators said they wanted to look for the original, the paper
stock it was written on and any other threatening notes.
An El Cajon police spokesman declined to comment on the affidavit, saying it was not intended for public release.
The
murder of Alawadi in a close-knit refugee community on the outskirts of
San Diego has brought attention to a rise in bias crimes against
Muslims, and an FBI unit is assisting in the investigation.
In a
sign of how closely the case was being watched, the U.S. State
Department expressed condolences for Alawadi's death, and Iraqi
government representatives attended the funeral.
El Cajon is in
the heart of East San Diego County, home to the second-largest Iraqi
community in the United States, behind Detroit. More than half of El
Cajon's 100,000 residents are of Middle Eastern descent.
Alawadi
and her husband arrived in the United States in 1993. She was buried
last month in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, roughly 100 miles (160
km) south of Iraq's capital, Baghdad.