Man who intentionally hit Somali teen with truck outside KC mosque enters Alford plea
The driver of an SUV who intentionally struck and killed a 15-year-old Somali boy outside a Kansas City mosque in December 2014 entered an Alford plea to a second-degree murder charge earlier this week, according to court documents.
Jackson County prosecutors initially charged Ahmed Aden, now 39, with first-degree murder in the killing of Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein, who was hit as he left the Somali Center of Kansas City at Admiral Boulevard and Lydia Avenue.
A sophomore at Staley High School, the teenager had his legs nearly severed in the incident and later died.
By entering an Alford plea, Aden conceded, without admitting guilt, there was enough for prosecutors to convict him of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. He is set to be sentenced in February.
After his arrest, Aden told police he had been searching for men who threatened him nine days earlier. He said he planned to kill those men if he found them, according to court records. Aden told police he intentionally struck Abdisamad, but said he had mistaken the teenager for one of the men who had threatened him.
Members of the Somali community said Aden long was known to have made frequent and violent threats against Muslims and the mosque, occasionally even threatening the mass slaughter of worshipers. The FBI had investigated the crash as a possible hate crime.
After Abdisamad’s death, his uncle, Abdinajib Dirir, said the family, who had emigrated from war-torn Somalia, was devastated.
“There are no words to describe,” Dirir said in 2014. “This is a community that fled a violent situation. Now we’re facing violence in the United States. … We are American like everyone else. And this is a tragedy for us.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 11:13 AM.
