By Andrew Hay
TAOS, N.M. (Reuters) -New Mexico police said on Tuesday they had detained a suspect believed to be involved in four fatal shootings of Muslim men in Albuquerque over the past nine months.
Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina wrote on Twitter that police tracked down a vehicle of interest in their probe of the murders, the latest of which involved a man who was gunned down on Friday night.
“The driver was detained and he is our primary suspect for the murders,” Medina wrote. He said police would hold a press briefing on Tuesday afternoon.
Albuquerque and state authorities have been working to provide extra police presence at mosques during prayer times as the investigation proceeds in New Mexico’s largest city, home to as many as 5,000 Muslims out of some 565,000 total residents.
All of the men slain were Muslims of Pakistani or Afghan descent who resided in Albuquerque. The first of the killings occurred in November. Three others were killed over the past month.
An official for the Islamic Center of New Mexico, Albuquerque’s largest mosque that several of the murdered men attended, declined immediate comment.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico and Rami Ayyub in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)
