Located four blocks from our house, this is where just after midnight on July 3, a Lyft driver named Nasratullah Ahmad Yar was shot dead by four youngsters wearing masks and balaclavas in an attempted carjacking. The perpetrators are seen on security camera footage fleeing down the alley, with one saying, “You killed him,” and another saying, “He was reaching [for a gun], bro.” It is believed that the victim was just getting out of his car to surrender it to the juveniles.

Ahmad Yar, 31 years old and a father of four, including a 15-month-old infant, had served as an interpreter for the US Army for 10 years in Afghanistan. He fled his home country since he became a target of the Taliban after the fall of Kabul, first to Philadelphia, which they left after he was robbed at gunpoint, then to Alexandria, Virginia, where he worked 12 hours a day for Lyft to make ends meet. His wife had wanted him to come home early that fatal night, but he said he couldn’t because the rent was due.

What started out as “just another victim of gun violence on DC streets" story has turned into national news. A GoFundMe page was started by a humanitarian organization to help his family, which not only lost a husband and father but their only means of support. When I first looked at the site, they had collected around $3,000 of a $50,000 goal. As of Monday evening, they had collected close to $500,000. For anybody interested in helping, go to http://www.gofundme.com/f/support-family-of-murdered-afghan-interpreter?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet&utm_location=DASHBOARD&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&mibextid=Zxz2cZ A copy of the GoFundMe page is posted on the parking sign in the picture, where Ahmad Yar was shot (and also below). A local news report is located at http://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/virginia/lyft-driver-killed-dc-afghanistan-interpreter-us-army-special-forces-escaped-taliban-father-of-four/65-9210b742-2fc8-4292-a440-07b8cee60ef6 and one from CNN is at http://www.cnn.com/2023/07/07/us/lyft-driver-interpreter-afghanistan-killing/index.html

Needless to say, our neighborhood is in grief over this senseless tragedy and is also worried that the gun violence that is rampant in our city has come to our until-now relatively safe streets. The police haven’t identified the murderers, and I doubt they will, but four juveniles who resembled them were seen the next day by a woman out for a walk at 6 p.m. who had a feeling she was about to be mugged. Luckily, they ran away when a police car turned onto the block.

‘Support family of murdered Afghan interpreter’