Three young immigrant American men have been found dead in apparent "execution style" killings in an abandoned house in Indiana.
The bodies of Mohamedtaha Omar, 23, Adam Mekki, 20 and Muhannad Tairab, 17, were discovered on Feb. 24 in the city of Fort Wayne, showing multiple gunshot wounds. Public Safety Director Rusty York described descibed the murders as "execution style."
York told CNN that police had “no reason to believe this is any type of hate crime or focus because of their religion or nationality."
He added that there were most likely more than one person at the scene of the crime because, "it's hard for one person to commit that act by himself," saying that the murders probably happened within an hour, as a group of people had left the house and then returned to discover what had happened.
The abandoned house was known as a place where young people would go without adult supervision. “We were aware that this home had become a problem for the neighbourhood," York explained.
The triple murders come one year after the notorious Chapel Hill killings, in which three Muslim Americans were gunned down in their home by a single attacker. Despite increasing Islamophobic violence happening in the US, the murders are not being investigated as a hate crime.
US media coverage of the recent murders in Indiana has been criticized, as the three young men, who were from east African families, did not receive as much attention as other murders that occurred the same week.
