Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
For Minara Rahman and her husband, a move to Philadelphia was supposed to be a fresh start. <\/p>\n
She and Md Mahfuzul Haque met while attending medical school in their native Bangladesh in 2000, married soon after, and remained nearly inseparable for 21 years, most of them spent in Canada.<\/p>\n
Their love story came to a tragic conclusion early this month when Haque, a 43-year-old doctor who was driving for DoorDash to support Rahman\u2019s optometry career, was shot and killed during a robbery outside a Southwest Philadelphia home. <\/p>\n
It was one of at least three shootings involving food delivery drivers in the city this summer. <\/p>\n
Last week, prosecutors charged 15-year-old Zakah Johnson with murder, robbery, and related crimes <\/a>in connection with the killing, and police are looking for two other people they believe are involved. <\/p>\n \u201cI still can\u2019t believe it,\u201d said Rahman, 43. \u201cI\u2019m crying, I\u2019m mourning, I\u2019m in grief, but I\u2019m still not believing he\u2019s not with me.\u201d <\/p>\n Philadelphia had only recently become home for Rahman, Haque, and their 14-year-old son. <\/p>\n In 2023, the family moved from Vancouver, where much of Haque\u2019s extended family lives, as Rahman began her studies at Drexel University<\/a>\u2019s optometry school, she said. <\/p>\n She and Haque had both been practicing physicians in Bangladesh and worked in the healthcare industry in Canada, where they moved in 2011 after receiving skilled immigration visas. <\/p>\n In Philadelphia, Rahman saw the opportunity to get an American medical license and earn enough to support her family. <\/p>\n Haque, she said, sacrificed his own professional ambitions to support that move, doing odd jobs and driving for DoorDash to earn money while she completed school. <\/p>\n Rahman graduated from Drexel last year and began practical training while the family worked to extend their U.S. visas. Part of her work involved conducting eye exams for police and security guards, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was me who wanted to do something more, and he always supported me,\u201d Rahman said of her husband. \u201cWithout him, it would have been impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Rahman worried that Philadelphia could be dangerous, she said, she and Haque believed that life in the United States would offer their family safety and security.<\/p>\n She no longer thinks so.<\/p>\n Just days after Haque\u2019s killing, police made an arrest in a separate homicide case<\/a> involving a food delivery driver. They accused a 14-year-old Queen Village teen of luring the man, Anshul Kuncha<\/a>, to an abandoned North Philadelphia<\/a> rowhouse, where he was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head. <\/p>\n And on Tuesday, police said, a 31-year-old man delivering for DoorDash was shot in the hand after getting into an argument with two women in Northern Liberties<\/a>. He was placed in stable condition at a nearby hospital. <\/p>\n Since the July 7 shooting of Haque, Rahman has been in touch with police seeking to gather more information about her husband\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n Officers responded to the 1000 block of South Ithan Street in the city\u2019s Kingsessing<\/a> neighborhood around 9:30 that evening to find Haque on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head. <\/p>\n His car was still running, investigators said, and a bag of delivery food was found nearby. They soon identified three suspects, masked men wearing dark clothing.<\/p>\n