A life taken for no reason
The murder of a Kiwi-Somali taxi driver in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy was frenzied, violent and most likely completely random. This week marks six months since the killing. Tammy Mills reports.
In Islam, life belongs to God and it’s taken at a time predetermined by Allah. Mohamud Muktar lived like he knew his life was going to be short. The money he didn’t send to his mother and five brothers and sisters in New Zealand went on shopping and fortnightly hair cuts, but mostly he’d blow it on food and friends.
Smith St in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood was his favourite haunt. The 31-year-old went to a Thai restaurant at least once a week, and Vietnamese rolls from N Lee bakery were his number one.
He’d bring ribs from the latest American barbecue place home to his dad and every Sunday, his two best friends (the three Mohamuds, they were called) would meet at a new place to review the food among themselves.
‘‘He never thought for tomorrow, only for today,’’ his father, Muktar Hussen, says.
‘‘My other son, he’s totally different. You give him $10, he’ll save for tomorrow, for tomorrow, for tomorrow.’’
Hussen switches to Somali and starts talking to two of the ‘three Mohamuds’ sitting next to him on the couch in his North Fitzroy flat.
Maxmud Bare (the Somali spelling of Mohamud) nods.
‘‘Maybe that’s why he was so happy, so content. . . he lived for today,’’ Bare says.
On Wednesday, April 20, Hussen got up at 4am to start the morning shift driving the taxi he shared with his son.
Five days a week, Muktar worked the afternoon shift and got home just after 11pm, leaving the keys to the cab hanging on a hook by the doorway for his dad.
The keys weren’t there that morning.
Hussen tried to call Muktar, but there was no answer. He walked out of their flat and down Napier St towards the town hall where they normally parked.
There were police cars, police tape and lights flashing in the morning dark, but Hussen was focused on his taxi.
‘‘I was only looking for my taxi, I need my taxi,’’ Hussen told a police officer guarding the scene. ‘‘That your taxi?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Wait there.’’ A homicide detective in a suit came over and asked him again; ‘‘Is this your taxi?’’ and ‘‘Who drove it?’’ ‘‘My son.’’ ‘‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your son has been killed.’’
‘‘The first question I asked is ’Who killed my son’?’’
Shortly after 11pm, Muktar had parked the taxi and turned off the meter. As he headed home, he was stabbed in a frenzy in a surprise attack. It would have taken less than a minute for him to die on the footpath behind a kindergarten and a few metres from a police station.
Two people sitting on a park bench across the road heard his faint, final cries for help. They then saw a slim man about 183cm tall with light, shoulder-length hair running past them.
He may have been a witness, but more than likely, he was the killer. Last month, detectives interviewed a man who was charged over injuring two other men in random stabbings before and after Muktar’s death.
The randomness fits, and the description of the alleged offender matches, but he remains only a person of interest, not a suspect.
Still, detectives believe Muktar had never met his killer until that night.
In many ways, Hussen and his friends say, that’s better. To hear from police that they were chasing a stranger tempered the growing paranoia Hussen and Muktar’s friends were feeling.
‘‘After he died, everybody was a suspect. That was the reality,’’ Bare says.
‘‘I thought it might be family, or someone in the community,’’ Hussen says.
‘‘But you don’t know his father,
Everywhere I go, everything I do. I remember what he’s saying. Always I talk with him. Muktar Hussen
you don’t know his brother. . . Sometimes, that’s better.’’
Better, but it doesn’t ease the pain. Muktar’s friends can’t stand driving past the spot where he was killed and their Sunday food reviews have dropped off. It hurts without him.
Hussen went back to driving the taxi only a month ago and moved from the house the two of them shared. Still, he talks to his son daily. ‘‘Everywhere I go, everything I do, I remember what he’s saying. Always I talk with him. When you hear some news, when you talk with somebody, you remember him. I tell him ‘This is what’s happened, this, this and this’,’’ he says.
And he finds comfort in his community, who share the loss, and in his beliefs.
In his culture, Hussen says, everybody has their day and his eldest son was never meant to pass Wednesday, April 20.
‘‘I cannot say why it’s happened. . . but it was supposed to happen that way. It brings logic to it sometimes. That it was meant to happen.’’