A lone gunman killed a Queens imam and his assistant as the pair walked home from Saturday afternoon prayers, shooting each in the head from close range, cops and witnesses said.
Both victims were dressed in Muslim garb when targeted by the shooter, who fled the scene on foot and remained at large. Members of the mosque quickly denounced the double homicide as a hate crime.
Imam Alala Uddin Akongi, the married father of three, was a revered religious leader since his arrival in Queens from Bangladesh less than two years ago. His assistant, 65-year-old Thara Uddin, died about four hours after the attack.
The shooter left his victims lying in their own blood just one block from the Al-Furqan Jame Masjid Mosque in Ozone Park, where the two prayed together only minutes earlier.
The gunshots rang out around 1:55 p.m. on 79th St., said police sources. It was unclear if the killer said anything before he started shooting.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene where the shooter started blasting at the two unarmed victims in the middle of a blistering August afternoon.
“We are devastated,” said Kobir Chowdhury, president of a second neighborhood mosque. “We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to know if they did this just because of our religion.”
The imam was “a very sweet, soft-spoken, humble man,” said Chowdhury, 40. “He’s a role model as an imam, as a father, as a community member. He didn’t have any disputes with anybody.”
Cops and witnesses described the shooter as tall and Hispanic, carrying a large handgun, and wearing a dark blue shirt and short pants. Police received a 911 call with a report of shots fired.
Police, without providing a motive, said initially that the shooting was not a hate crime. The gunfire erupted near a storage facility and a block away from the elevated A train station, officials said.
