A Hazelwood man Tuesday was cleared of all charges related to the November shooting of a Muslim cab driver who told police he believed the incident was a hate crime.
Jurors took little more than two hours to acquit Anthony Lamar Mohamed, 27, of attempted homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment in the shooting of Hakim Ghorbal in the early hours of last Thanksgiving.
Mr. Ghorbal, 38, an immigrant from Morocco, told police after the incident that he had picked Mr. Mohamed up at Rivers Casino and had driven him to his home on Second Avenue. During the drive, Mr. Ghorbal said, the two men discussed Islam.
He said that when he dropped Mr. Mohamed off, Mr. Mohamed went into his home and returned with a rifle and shot him as he sped away.
“He started the conversation and began to ask questions like, ‘You seem to be like a Pakistani guy. Are you from Pakistan?’ ” Mr. Ghorbal said in November while hospitalized at UPMC Mercy, where he was being treated for a bullet wound in the upper back. “And I said, ‘No, I’m from Morocco. But I’m an American guy.’
“Then he continued the conversation. He began to speak about ISIS killing people. I told him, ‘Actually, I’m against ISIS. I don’t like them.’ I even told him that they are killing innocent people,” he said at the time. “I noticed that he changed his tone and he began to satirize Muhammad, my prophet, and began to shift to his personal life. He mentioned that he has two kids and was in prison for some time.
“So it was this kind of stuff until we got to his destination. He asked me to wait for a little bit because he forgot his wallet in the house. I waited for just five minutes, I think, and I noticed that he came out of the house carrying a rifle in his hand. I noticed him coming toward me. I didn’t hesitate. I [made] a fast decision to leave and drove my taxi away because I felt he was going to do something. There is danger. He would shoot me or something. I felt like he had the intention to kill me,” he said in the hospital interview.
Police, using surveillance video from the casino and inside the Cranberry Taxi cab, were able to identify Mr. Mohamed as the passenger but were unable to determine that he was the shooter.
During the trial, which began Thursday, defense attorney Patrick Sweeney pointed to the lack of physical evidence linking Mr. Mohamed to the crime. Mr. Sweeney also said that Mr. Ghorbal’s difficulty with English may have led to him misinterpreting what his passenger was saying and how he meant it.
Another blow to the prosecution was that Mr. Ghorbal was unable to identify Mr. Mohamed in a photo lineup days after the shooting.
Dan Majors: dmajors@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1456.
First Published: August 17, 2016, 12:00 a.m.
