The husband of a young mother who was shot dead as they walked with their three-year-old son along a street in the US state of New Jersey has been charged with her murder.
Kashif Parvaiz, 26, who was himself wounded in Tuesday’s shooting, said he and Nazish Noorani had been attacked by men who called them terrorists.
But police say he and a woman, Antionette Stephen, plotted the murder. Prosecutors have not detailed the suspects’ relationship. According to an arrest affidavit seen by the BBC, Stephen is suspected of pulling the trigger during the attack, in which the child was unharmed. She and Parvaiz are in custody facing charges of murder, conspiracy and weapons offences. He is also accused of child-endangerment.
Prosecutors said Parvaiz and Noorani, 27, had been visiting relatives in Boonton, northern New Jersey, on Tuesday evening when shots rang out.
Noorani died and Parvaiz was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
According to the Morris County prosecutor, Parvaiz told investigators they had been shot by a black male, a white male and a third unknown male, who shouted racist slurs.
But inconsistencies emerged in his story under questioning, authorities said. He later said that they had been attacked by three black males, according to the arrest affadavit.
Under further questioning, Parvaiz said he did not intend for this to happen, that he did not want to go to jail, and that he should control his anger so this did not happen again. According to a police arrest report, Parvaiz admitted that he had been involved in the shooting. In the report, Parvaiz is said to have acknowledged during questioning by detectives that “there were issues in his marriage and that he was angry at his wife, the victim, for allegedly speaking negatively about his family.” The report said that Parvaiz had described telling Stephen about turbulence in his marriage and that Stephen promised to “think of something” to deal with the situation. They agreed, according to the report, that Parvaiz “would go out for a walk with the victim” and that Stephen “would kill the victim and wound the suspect.”
“Within hours of the crime, it was obvious to investigators that this was sadly the alleged handiwork of the victim’s husband, who allegedly did the unthinkable and plotted to murder his wife after a religious celebration,” Morris County prosecutor Robert Bianchi said in a statement.
According to the affidavit, Noorani had recently sent to her brother a text message, which read: “He abuses me … I’m so tired of this … Someday U will find me dead, but it’s cuz (because) of Kashi … he wants to kill me.” Parvaiz had told family and neighbours that he was attending graduate school at Harvard, but the school has no record of him studying there. Stephen, a native of India, is an employee at a Best Buy store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to US media.