By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES, April 5 (Reuters) – 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.
(Additional reporting by Marty Graham and Mary Slosson; Editing
by Steve Gorman and Doina Chiacu)
