On Sunday, two teenage girls were charged with the murder of an Uber driver whose car they attempted to steal. The suspects, who have not been identified because of their ages — the older of the two was 15 — were also charged with assault for having used a stun gun on the driver, Mohammad Anwar, 66, last Tuesday.
A graphic video of the incident, which has been deemed too horrific to be reposted here, can be found on social media. It shows Anwar attempting to wrest one of the teens from the driver’s seat through the open door, at which point she hits the gas and tears off down the street, with Anwar hanging on. As he struggles to retake the wheel, the young driver takes a sharp right far too fast and the car flips over, killing Anwar.
For several days, Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, D.C., where the crime occurred, was silent. When she finally spoke up, it was on Twitter, where she wrote:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
How nice. A man is senselessly killed during the commission of a violent crime, and the mayor can offer nothing more than a PSA on how to avoid auto theft.
On Sunday, Bowser finally deleted the tweet, but by then it was too late to undo the mess she had had made. As USA Today notes, the Mayor’s Office of Communications released a statement that claimed that the post had been “prescheduled” to appear on Twitter as part of an effort to “raise awareness about a troubling increase in this violent crime, related arrests and safety tips.” The statement added, almost as an afterthought, that the tweet “should not detract from the tragic death of Mohammad Anwar. Our thoughts and prayers remain with his family and the families of those we have lost to violence.”
No doubt the family of the father of three is deeply touched by Bowser’s sympathy for their loss.
