Fort Wayne homicides remain a mystery one month later
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – It’s been exactly a month since Fort Wayne police found 23-year-old Mohamedtaha Omar, 20-year-old Adam Mekki, and 17-year-old Muhannad Tairab dead inside a home on 808 East Lewis Street.
The case got attention across the country and the world after initial outcry over the homicides being a hate crime. That’s something both the victims’ families and police maintain is absolutely not the case.
“This rocked the foundation of our community. This rocked the foundation of our country. This rocked the foundation internationally. We had heard from around the world about this particular incident. So, you would think that the amount of attention that this has received that people would realize if ever there was a reason to step up to do the right thing, now is the time,” Fort Wayne Police Department spokesperson Michael Joyner said.
While no arrests have been made, police said they are still very confident there are several people out there who know what happened and who is responsible. Now, they said it’s just a matter of those individuals coming forward and doing the right thing.
“If it’s a situation like this where we need information from the public, we can only do so much. We can make pleas. We can offer rewards, but at some point, individuals with that information that’s key to the investigation must do the right thing. That’s to step up and provide law enforcement that necessary piece or pieces of the puzzle that help us to bring closure to identifying the parties responsible so we can bring them to justice,” Joyner said.
Within the first week after the homicides happened, Crime Stoppers had only received a few tips. WISH-TV’s sister station WANE checked in with the office Thursday. Director Greg Lewis said his team has received four to five more calls and emails since then. However, Lewis couldn’t comment on whether or not those tips have led to anything substantial.
“We knew nothing. It was information gathering in the beginning. It was processing in the beginning. Now, it’s just going over the information we’ve been provided, the items that we’ve collected from the scene, and trying to figure out how they all come together. So, I would say yes, we’re better off today than we were day one, but we’re not where we would want to be 31 or 30 days out from the incident occurring. So, we would like to be in a better place,” Joyner said.
FWPD leaders said the department is still waiting for some evidence to be processed from the scene. Leaders met with the victims’ family soon after the crime first happened. They also met with them again last Friday.
Anyone with information can call Crime Stoppers at 436-STOP or 436-7869.