Officials Deny Racial Motive In Vicious Murder Of St. Louis Bosnian Man, Community Disagrees

Officials are denying racial motives were behind the horrific attack that claimed the life of a Bosnian man in St. Louis early Sunday morning around 1:15 A.M. CT. Police said Zemir Begic, a 32-year-old newlywed, was hit in the head, face, mouth and body with hammers at an intersection in southwest St. Louis just 20 miles from Ferguson and left to die on the street.

On Monday evening, Robert Mitchell, 17, was charged as an adult with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death. He turned himself in late Sunday after 15- and 16-year-old suspects were taken into custody in connection with the attack that has left St. Louis’s 70,000-member Bosnian community reeling and demanding further police action.

A fourth suspect remains at large, according to police.

“Investigators don’t believe the incident is in any way related to Ferguson,” St. Louis Police spokeswoman Schron Jackson said. “The incident is not being investigated as a hate crime.”

However, their unwillingness to follow up on witness testimony and claims are being met with anger in the Bosnian community.

“Bosnians right now have an impression that this was a hate crime,” said Bosnian Chamber of Commerce president Sadik Kukic, who met Monday with the city’s mayor and police chief to discuss the murder.

Begic was not the only person they attacked that night, and at least one witness said the attack occurred “right after black people running up and down the street, yelling F*** the white people, kill the white people.”

“This is what we have,” she says in a video taken soon after the attack, which is viewable below.

While it is difficult to tell if the witness heard protestors or the attackers themselves, for the Bosnian community, the answer is clear. Considering others have reported being assaulted by a group matching that description, and reports of racial epithets were heard coming from the group as well, it is beyond odd that police were so quickly willing to rule out racial motivations behind the attack.

Seldin Dzananovic, 24, said the teens with the hammers confronted him farther north on Gravois Ave about an hour before the attack on Begic. However, Dzananovic said he was able to fight them off, though he did suffer minor injuries to the hands and neck.

Unfortunately, Zemir Begic was not so lucky.

According to a criminal complaint released Tuesday, Begic and his fiancee, Arijana Mujkanovic, as well as another male passenger, were walking to their car when they heard a group, including at least of the defendants, screaming out loud. As Begic began to drive away, one of the teenagers, “jumped on the back of his car and began hitting it,” the complaint said.

Without provocation, they began striking it with hammers. When Zemir got out to confront them and protect Arijana, four men viciously beat him with at least one hammer until he was rendered unconscious. He was pronounced dead later at the hospital.

Suad Nuranjkovic, 49, said he got out of the passenger seat of the car and hid in a nearby parking lot during the attack.

“I was afraid that if one of them had a gun, they were going to shoot me, so I didn’t know what to do,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who failed to mention until the very end of the story that two of the attackers were black, while the other was Hispanic.

“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 Post-Dispatch. “Never in my life did I think he would get murdered.”

Denisa said her brother’s funeral would be in Iowa. A crowd-funding site has been set up to help finance the funeral and, on the page, a grieving sister wrote of her love for her brother.

“I will forever have a big piece of my heart destroyed,” Denisa wrote. “My big brother is gone, never coming back to us. [I] wish this was a terrible dream. He was a great brother, son, husband and helped anyone. I want my brother back. He always protected me.”

She said singing was his passion, and his younger brother Rasim Begic, 20, said he was a karate instructor. Both of his siblings say that he “loved America.”

“He loved every race,” Rasim said of his older brother. “He had friends all over the world.”

“He loved kids. He loved music,” he added. “Our family will never be the same.”