Was really shocked to read this news.
People are speculating that this was either a hate crime or a gang initiation.
May God grant peace to the surviving family members.
A mother walking with her 3-year-old son in Boonton late Tuesday night was shot and killed and her husband injured in what prosecutors are saying appears to be a targeted shooting. The family was taking a stroll after Ramadan’s traditional evening meal, authorities said this morning. Neighbors said they heard between five and eight shots ring out on quiet Cedar Street in the Morris County town about 11:30 p.m., killing Nazish Noorani, 27, police and relatives said. The child, who was in his stroller, was not hurt, but her husband, Kashif Pervaiz, was taken to a local hospital with gunshot wounds, they said.
“This investigation is ongoing and the release of information at this stage would compromise the progress of same,” said Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi. “From what we have already determined, however, it should be noted that this shooting clearly appears to be target specific and that there is not a continuing danger to the general public at large.”
Bianchi wouldn’t say which family member or both appeared to be the target.
Town police Chief Michael Beltran would not comment on reports from local television and radio stations that three people were involved in the shooting.
Asked if the couple could have been targeted because they are Pakistani-American, Beltran said, “We’ve had Muslims in the community for over 50 years and very few problems with hate crimes.”
A first-aid responder who was among the first at the scene, Katie Bakstad, said Noorani was shot near her heart and likely killed instantly. Her husband was shot in the ankle and shoulder, she said.
Bakstad, who is now no longer with the squad, said Noorani’s body was lying in the street, and that her husband was on the sidewalk. The stroller, with the boy inside it, was about four feet from Noorani and a nearby resident was trying to calm the boy, Bakstad said.
Bakstad’s mother, Susan Zaniewski, who lives on Cornelia Street nearby, called the shooting “freaky.”
“This stuff doesn’t happen here,” she said.
Dominico DiBiase, who lives next door to Noorani’s family, said he was watching a baseball game when he heard gunshots.
“This is a quiet area,” he said. “For years, people go to work and come home.”
Another neighbor said he heard a series of what he thought were firecrackers.
“Then I heard someone yell, ‘Help! Help! Help!,’" Shaun Gonzalez said.
The couple were walking from one relative’s home to another after Iftar, the nightly meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, a law enforcement source said.
A man who identified himself as the young man’s father, Shafiq Hassan, said that the couple lives in Brooklyn and was visiting family in Boonton, where Noorani is from.
Pervaiz’s sister, Zareen Hassan, 23, answered the door of the couple’s Brooklyn home today.
“We are too in shock right now,” she said. “I’m still shocked and I’m still crying.”
She said the Brooklyn home, which sits on a row of middle-class single homes and apartment buildings in Brooklyn’s Flatbush section, belongs to her father.
Pervaiz and his wife lived in the three-story, single-family home with other family members, according to his sister.
Pervaiz, who works as an architect and engineer, and his family are Brooklyn natives. Noorani comes from Boonton. According to a self-published, online autobiography, Parvaiz has advanced degrees in both architecture and structural engineering and cultivates an interest in Russian architecture and self-published a book on the subject in 2010. He has owned Riyaan Developers, a Brooklyn construction firm since 2007.
Zareen Hassan said she had no idea what motivated the gunmen to attack her brother and sister-in-law.
“Whatever’s on the news is what we’re hearing,” she said. “I’m still shocked and I’m still crying.”
Zareen Hassan said she had no updates on the condition of her brother.
“He’s still in the hospital,” she said. “I have no news.”
Pervaiz, a doctoral student at Harvard, is a graduate of Columbia University, a relative said.
Morris County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Paul would only confirm that investigators are on the scene and would release information at a later time.
Bakstad, who joined the Boonton Kiwanis First Aid Squad about a month ago, said she went into shock soon after getting to the shooting scene.
“It’s nothing like I’ve experienced in my life,” she said.
