.
Police arrested and charged Morel with murder late Monday night in the brazen daytime shooting deaths of an imam and his friend Credit: AP:Associated Press Protests have been staged to condemn the murder of the two men with those in the community calling it a hate crime Credit: Getty Images But NYPD officials don’t buy it.
“We believe because of the evidence . . . that this is the individual,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Monday.
That evidence includes a revolver found at Morel’s home that matches the type of gun detectives believe was used in the shooting. (No shell casings were found at the scene, a source told The Post.) Police are also testing powder residue on his clothes.
“We can’t explain why he was there,” Boyce said. But “he was [at the scene] approximately eight minutes before the homicide.”
The brother, Alvin, said Oscar worked as a school janitor.
“I spoke to him just last [Sunday] evening, and he was all nonchalant, like nothing has happened,’’ the brother said.
'We are Americans, just like you!': Mourners demand justice for slain imam, assistant
'We are Americans, just like you!': Mourners demand justice for slain imam, assistant
The suspect is Hispanic, and some police sources and local residents have noted simmering tensions in the largely Hispanic neighborhood as the Bangladeshi Muslim population there grows.
But “preliminarily, [police] don’t have a motive for the shooting,” a law enforcement source insisted. “They don’t know what it’s about . . . They know it was a hit; the guy came up from behind and shot them. But they don’t have a motive.”
A police vehicle is parked across the street from the Al-Furqan Jame Masjid mosque, where two men had just left before they were murdered Credit: AP:Associated Press Forensic officers were called in to examine the scene Credit: Splash News At a press conference, police explained how cops were able to track down the suspect through his Chevy TrailBlazer. Surveillance footage showed the killer hopping into the SUV after the shooting.
Detectives immediately entered the vehicle into their database system — and 10 minutes later, there was a reported hit-and-run in Brooklyn involving a bicyclist and a TrailBlazer that matched the description of the killer’s vehicle.
“The hit-and-run happened at Pine and Pitkin about three miles away from the mosque,” Boyce noted.
Authorities tracked the TrailBlazer to East New York, where the suspect hopped into the vehicle and “rammed the detectives’ car several times in an effort to get away,” Boyce said. Oscar Morel was taken into custody around 11 p.m., sources said, and charged with murder.
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