On Sunday afternoon, the body of Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old Muslim girl from Virginia, was discovered by police after going missing earlier that morning. The story went viral Monday with accusations that she was targeted because of her religion. According to authorities, that was not the motive of her attacker, 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres, road rage was. And in addition to him being under arrest, Immigration and Customs Enforcement believe him to be an illegal immigrant. Only ABC reported the story Monday evening (CBS, NBC, Univision and Telemundo ignored it), but they failed to mention his legal status.
Ahead of the story itself, Anchor David Muir played up the attack as a hate crime despite the facts known at the time. “The teenage girl killed on the side of the road. Was it a hate crime? What police are now saying,” he hyped as the World News Tonight was going to a commercial break.
When that story finally aired, Muir gave the murder a mere 18 seconds news brief, saying:
To the index. The murder of a teenage Muslim girl in Sterling, Virginia. Police say the 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen was beaten to death. They say she was the victim of road rage. Investigators say she was walking to a mosque with friends. The suspect then driving up to them. 22-year-old Darwin Torres is under arrest tonight. Police do not believe she was targeted.
ABC knew perfectly well at the time of their on-air report that Torres was an illegal immigrant. In an article posted on ABC News’ website at 3:44 PM (almost three hours before WNT went live), reporter Karma Allen wrote that, “ICE said in a statement Monday that they have filed a detainer on Torres, a citizen of El Salvador, for potential deportation as he is believed to be in the U.S. illegally.”
Also left out of the report were some of the more grim details of the heinous act. “[Torres] got into an argument with a teen on a bike and then drove his car over a curb, scattering the group of as many as 15 teens,” wrote The Washington Post. “He caught up with them a short time later in a parking lot and chased them with a baseball bat, striking 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen and then abducting her in his car.” Torres eventually killed Hassanen and dumped her body in a pond near where he lived.
The Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), in addition to the Spanish-language networks, have a long history of ignoring and censoring the crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Recently, they censored the infamous Rockville, Maryland rape case where two illegal immigrants were accused of raping a minor in a high school bathroom. The charges were later substituted with child pornography charges, but the networks still ignored the case.
Transcript below:
ABC
World News Tonight
June 19, 2017
6:49:19 PM EasterDAVID MUIR: [When we come back] Also, the teenage girl killed on the side of the road. Was it a hate crime? What police are now saying.
(…)
6:52:32 PM Eastern
MUIR: To the index. The murder of a teenage Muslim girl in Sterling, Virginia. Police say the 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen was beaten to death. They say she was the victim of road rage. Investigators say she was walking to a mosque with friends. The suspect then driving up to them. 22-year-old Darwin Torres is under arrest tonight. Police do not believe she was targeted.
