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US police have taken into remand the man arrested in connection with the daylight killings of two Bangladeshi expatriates in the city of Buffalo, New York for five days.
Dale Cummings, 31, was arraigned on Monday afternoon before Buffalo City Court Judge Samuel P Davis. The judge allowed police to interrogate the suspect until May 3 as appealed by District Attorney Michael J Keane.
The district attorney attended a press briefing with Buffalo City Mayor Byron W Brown and Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia on the same day, reports bdnews24.com.
Cummings has been named in several criminal cases but never appeared in court as he doesn’t have a permanent address. He was seen in the CCTV footage recovered from cameras installed near the murder site.
Police seized one automatic rifle from the arrestee, which he possessed illegally, said the district attorney. They are checking whether the rifle was used to kill the two Bangladeshis, he said.
If proven guilty of possessing a firearm illegally, Cummings may face a maximum of 15 years imprisonment, the attorney said, adding the suspect may get jailed for life if proven guilty of murdering the two men.
On Saturday, 58-year-old Abu Saleh Mohammad Yusuf from Sylhet’s Kanaighat and 43-year-old Babul Mia from Cumilla were shot dead on the 100 block of Zenner Street at the intersection of East Ferry Street and Bailey Avenue.
Babul Mia used to live in Maryland with his family and had recently bought a house in Buffalo. Yusuf had shifted to Buffalo permanently with his wife and two daughters in December.
At the time of the incident, the victims were doing repair work on the house. One of them died on the spot while the other died while being taken to the hospital.
Police identified the suspect from the footage collected from a CCTV camera of the house next to the murder site. Later, they announced a $7,500 bounty for the suspect’s whereabouts.
Expatriate Bangladeshis staged a protest on Sunday after Zuhr prayers at the Buffalo Muslim Centre. They demanded the arrest and exemplary punishment for the killer. The Buffalo mayor, police commissioner and other high-ups attended the event to express their solidarity.
Police arrested Cummings approximately two hours after the protest was staged.
Both the mayor and police commissioner said in the press briefing that the house the victims were doing repair work on was up for sale. Cummings lived in that house. He might have shot the victims as he was worried about where to live when the house was sold following the repair work.
Keane, however, claimed that Cummings didn’t target the victims or shoot them out of malice. “Anyone present at the site could have been shot,” he said.
The investigation was ongoing, he added.