The eight-month investigation into the beating death of an Iraqi woman in her El Cajon dining room has led to the arrest of her husband, police announced Friday, putting to rest any notion that the mother of five was the victim of a hate crime.
Kassim Alhimidi, 48, was arrested at the El Cajon police station Thursday evening and booked into jail on one count of murder in the slaying of Shaima Alawadi.
He is being held without bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.
Alawadi, 32, was apparently planning to divorce her husband and move with her children to Texas, her brother, Hass Alawadi, told U-T San Diego. He said the husband had known about her plans to divorce for quite some time.
“After months of hard work, ... we determined this homicide was the result of domestic violence and not a hate crime,” El Cajon Police Chief Jim Redman said at a news conference Friday.
Investigators did not discuss possible motive or evidence in the case. No other arrests have been made, Redman said.
Alawadi was attacked at the family’s Skyview Street home March 21, when her husband had reportedly left to take their four younger children to school. She was struck on the head at least six times and suffered four skull fractures, according to court records. She was taken off of life support three days later.
A threatening note that called the family terrorists and told them to go back where they came from was found near her body. The handwritten note turned out to be a copy, not an original, according to court records. The family said a similar note had been left on their door weeks earlier, but they did not report the incident to police or keep the note.
The early implications that the slaying was a possible hate crime spawned international attention, especially among the Muslim community. Peace rallies and candlelight vigils promoting unity and a Muslim woman’s right to wear a head scarf spread throughout the world.
Alhimidi and his children gave tearful interviews to the media in the days following the slaying, and the widower was seen crying over his wife’s casket during her funeral in Iraq, at one point fainting.
In an interview a week after the killing, her husband told the Arabic Al Arabiya News: “My wife was a victim of xenophobia.”
But court records obtained at El Cajon Superior Court showed a family in turmoil.
Police who searched the home after the slaying found court paperwork to file for divorce in Alawadi’s Ford Explorer. The packet was still blank, but a form requesting a wavier of court fees was filled out in handwriting with Alawadi’s name, address and phone number.
The couple hailed from the same city of al-Samawa in southern Iraq, and they married in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia before moving to the U.S., Alhimidi told Al Arabiya. The husband, who had suffered health problems, was on disability and hadn’t worked in years, and his wife was a homemaker.
The couple’s 17-year-old daughter, Fatima Alhimidi, was also distraught about a pending arranged marriage to a cousin, the court documents show. She had attempted suicide five months earlier by jumping out of her mother’s moving car.
According to police, the fatal attack on Alawadi occurred about 11 a.m., when only Alawadi and Fatima were reportedly home.
Fatima told police she was in her bedroom when she heard her mother squeal, and about 10 seconds later heard the sound of glass breaking, according to a search warrant affidavit. She thought maybe her mom had dropped a plate.
When she went downstairs 10 minutes later, she found her mother lying unconscious on the ground, in the dining room near a computer, and called 911. A window was broken nearby.
An autopsy report described the assault as “extremely violent” and said the injuries may have been caused by a tire iron.
A neighbor reported seeing a skinny dark-skinned young man running in the area west of the family’s home after the slaying. He was carrying a brown doughnut-shaped box.
While Fatima was being interviewed by police the afternoon of her mother’s beating, a text message was sent from her phone to an unknown person, reading: “The detective will find out tell them cnt talk,” according to the affidavit.
Investigators have not revealed who may have sent the text, or to whom.
A week after the killing, police were still working on confirming the husband’s whereabouts at the time of the attack.
The widower and his eldest children traveled to Iraq for the funeral, staying for several weeks. Chief Redman said the husband was not considered a suspect at that time and could not be legally stopped from leaving the United States.
When the family returned to San Diego, they moved from their home on Skyview into a townhouse. Alhimidi tried to get his children’s lives back to normal, with school, prayer and sports, a family friend said at the time.
Police released no updates on the case in the ensuing months, frustrating Alawadi’s family in Texas and deepening the mystery.
“There were many aspects of this case that needed to be looked into, there were cultural issues that needed to be looked into, there were many witnesses,” the police chief said of the eight months of investigation. “Sometimes homicide investigations just take time. We were diligent in the investigation, and it culminated with an arrest.”
In jailhouse interviews with news stations Friday, Alhimidi denied any involvement in his wife’s slaying and insisted it was still a hate crime. Police told him that pings from his cellphone put him near the home at the time of the assault, he told 10News.
The couple’s four youngest children are in protective custody, the chief said.
Alawadi’s cousin, Hussain Alawadi, said news of the arrest surprised the family, and he commended police on their investigation.
“We are very happy to hear they arrested him,” he said. “We were stressed. We need to know who’s doing these things.”
Family friend Nazanin Wahid, who had been following the case closely, was also shocked.
“There were so many twists and turns to this case, it’s hard to know what to believe,” Wahid said.
Hanif Mohebi, executive director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on Islamic-American Relations said, “Since the beginning our ultimate goal was to get justice for Sister Shaima Alawadi.”
He referred to the case as “a family tragedy,” and said that domestic violence “has no place in our faith.”
“She has been a piece of our heart,” Mohebi said of Alawadi. “We need to do what we can to bring about justice.”