The son of the Brooklyn livery driver killed and dumped on the side of the road in Connecticut in 2005, said he had stopped holding onto hope that the cold case would be solved as decades passed.
He learned to live without his father Mureed Hussain — and with no memories of him.
Now, twenty years later, with a recent breakthrough and arrest in his father’s case, 21-year-old Safwan Mureed said he’s trying to sort through mixed emotions of gratitude and grief.
“We had lost hope. We kind of stopped thinking about it… We just felt like this massive injustice happened and then there wasn’t any resolution, there wasn’t any justice,” Mureed told the Daily News.
Mureed was an infant when his father was killed. He said his father, who has been described to him throughout his life as a “kind” and “loving” man, immigrated to New York from Pakistan in the late 90s in pursuit of economic opportunity to support his family.
Hussain, who was 35 at the time, mainly worked in construction, and had picked up a second job driving a cab at night just a few weeks before he was brutally murdered, Mureed said.
“It was winter, there were less [construction] jobs, so he decided to start driving,” Mureed said.
On Feb. 9 2005, three young men showed up at the Eastland Cab Company headquarters in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and asked to be driven to Enfield, Connecticut. Hussain, who had just gotten off his 12-hour shift, agreed to drive them there for $200, according to the criminal complaint and a Hartford Courant article published at the time.
Hussain was later found shot in the back of the head, his body tossed over a guardrail.
“South Main Street and School Street, that’s where we believe the shooting took place,” Windsor Locks Det. Sgt. Jeff Lampson told NBC Connecticut last month.
“We believe the cab driver was in his van, was either compelled to pull over or pulled over under his own volition, was shot in the car, and then pulled out, thrown over the guardrail, and his vehicle was located in Brooklyn.”
Hussain’s wife began to worry as time passed and he didn’t return home, Mureed said.
“She said that she woke up and she wasn’t home. She wasn’t that worried. She just assumed he was out working,” Mureed said of his mother. “But you know, time keeps passing, and then eventually she starts getting worried. She started calling and calling and he’s not picking up. She was calling other people in the family, they didn’t know where he was either.”
Three days later, the family’s worst nightmare became their reality, and one-year-old Safwan and his four-year-old brother Huzaifa were left without a father.
“I don’t have any memories [of him.],” Mureed said. “My brother, the only memory he has was in the funeral home. His body was being taken back to Pakistan to be buried there, and someone held him up to see [the body]. That’s the only thing he can recall.”
“I talk about this a lot with [my brother], just about how different our lives could’ve been. The life we could’ve had,” Mureed said solemnly.
The case ultimately went cold until Windsor Lock, CT detectives reopened the case last spring. “Through advancements in forensic technology, interviews, canvassing, and a re-examination of the evidence seized in 2005, detectives developed suspects,” the Windsor Locks PD said in a statement.
Two suspects, who had been identified back in 2005, were linked again to the killing through DNA evidence collected inside Hussain’s cab, officials said.
Suspect Mohammed Ali fled the country after the killing. After an arrest warrant was filed earlier this year, U.S. Marshals arrested 38-year-old Ali in Dublin, Ohio in March.
Ali’s DNA was found on Hussain’s clothing in areas that would be consistent with pulling a body out of a car and dragging him away.
“The arrest was a shock,” Mureed said. “It was emotional. I think for all of us, we kind of just moved on in a way, before the detectives came. Once they came last year it’s like, it’s all real again.”
Ali was extradited back to Connecticut, arraigned on murder charges on April 17 and ordered held without bail. Mureed and his family traveled to Hartford to attend the hearing.
“I never felt that angry,” he said of seeing Ali in court. “To tell you the truth I didn’t want to see his face. I did [see it]. He looked pathetic. I really mean it. He looked disgusting.”
Butt
The second suspect, Arfan Butt, 33, was shot and killed as he drove his gold BMW through Brooklyn in 2020, officials said. At the time of his death he was a registered sex offender convicted of first-degree rape, cops said. His murder remains unsolved, although police believe he was shot by his passenger.
“He died as he lived,” Mureed said matter-of-factly.
Dyker
A third person-of-interest, NYPD Detective Rohail Khalid was linked to the 2005 homicide in Ali’s arrest warrant, but his lawyer has insisted he is innocent.
Khalid, 38, was stripped of his gun and shield and placed on modified duty last month, officials said. Khalid’s potential link to the killing was first reported in CT Insider.
In 2005, Khalid was identified as one of “three persons believed to be involved in the case,” the documents say. He has adamantly denied any involvement in the killing and, when the murder took place, gave detectives an alibi, court documents confirm.
Khalid, Butt and Ali were friends who attended James Madison High School. They also lived in Marine Park, Brooklyn, where Hussain’s cab was found a few days after the murder.
Khalid offered his DNA to Connecticut detectives to see if it could be matched to items recovered on Hussain’s person or in his cab, which was recovered in Brooklyn after the killing, his attorney John Arlia told the News last month.
“Det. Rohail Khalid was cleared by the NYPD in this investigation some 20 years ago, when he appeared voluntarily to assist in the investigation and accordingly no arrests were made,” said Arlia, who is conflict trial counsel for each of the NYPD law enforcement unions.
“[He] offered his DNA for testing to prove he was never involved with any criminality. This DNA test was negative and thus exonerates him from these false accusations.”
Additional DNA tests ordered by Windsor Locks police have yet to be completed, but when they are, Det. Khalid will be exonerated, Arlia said.
As the case continues to unfold, Mureed said he feels grateful for some closure after nearly an entire lifetime without answers.
“I think that anything you do in this life, you should have to answer for it,” he said.
“I know it’s been 20 years, but I’m thankful that a semblance of justice is going to be served.”
