Rochester provided no safety for man who fled Iraq

If you survive civil war in Iraq, we like to think that Rochester, Minn., won’t be a dangerous place. So, Ahmed Muafaq Abdulhu Al Naddf’s killing last week is particularly distressing.

He, his wife, and two children — now 7 and 4 — moved to Rochester in 2014.

He went to clean up his garage last week, his wife tells the Rochester Post Bulletin. It cost him his life.

“I called out to him, ‘Answer me. I’m calling you.’ I just wanted to touch him,” Hanadi Al Shaikhli says about the moment she had to identify his body. “He’s in another world. They (the police officers) didn’t let me touch him.”

“They didn’t kill one person. They killed four people. They killed me and his children,” she tells the PB.

A neighborhood man has been accused of the killing because he thought Al Naddf hit his car. Police said there wasn’t any damage to either of the vehicles.

“There’s nothing here to indicate that the victim did anything wrong, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” a police captain said.

He’s the second Iraqi immigrant killed in Rochester this year.