Remember when this was huge news and President Obama was forced to disavow Black Lives Matter?
Neither do I.
Story:
Zemir Begic was a teenager when he and his family fled Bosnia in the aftermath of a bloody civil war. In America, he found work, friends and love before a pack of thugs beat him to death with hammers on a city street in St. Louis as his terrified fiancee watched early Sunday.
Begic, his wife of six months and a friend were surrounded by a group a teenagers who began banging on it with hammers, according to authorities and witnesses. When Begic stepped out of his car to confront them, the teens pounced on him, pummeling him with the hammers and leaving him fatally injured. He died hours later at St. Louis University Hospital.
“The last thing he did before he actually died was pull me out of the way and put himself in front of me, basically giving up his life for me,” Begic's fiancee, Arijana Mujkanovic, told KSDK.
The attack occurred in southwest St. Louis, just 20 miles from Ferguson, where a police shooting of a black man and a grand jury's subsequent decision not to indict the officer sparked violent riots. Police have said the murder of Begic, 32, does not appear to be racially motivated, and have arrested three teens and were looking for one or possibly two more. The married immigrant was driving his car when the teens approached at a traffic light and began striking it with hammers, prompting him to get out and confront them, according to police.
The attack has left St. Louis's 70,000-member Bosnian community reeling and calling for more police protection.
“We come from Bosnia because we were getting killed and our homes and families were getting destroyed,” Denisa Begic, his 23-year-old sister, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Never in my life did I think he would get murdered.”
On Monday evening, Robert Mitchell, 17, was charged as an adult with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death, KMOV-TV reported. Mitchell turned himself in late Sunday after 15- and 16-year-old suspects were taken into custody. Despite the proximity to the racially-charged Ferguson incident, which has generated national headlines, police insist there is no...
