CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. — A community in Cheektowaga is calling for justice just 48 hours after 20-year-old Md. Rawnaq Ratin was shot and killed over a parking spot.
Following a memorial service at the Buffalo Muslim Center on Monday evening, over 100 people took to the streets of a neighborhood in Cheektowaga, demanding action after the shooting Saturday that they are calling a hate crime.
Shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, Cheektowaga Police arrived on scene on Cedar Road to find Ratin with a gunshot wound. Life-saving measures were immediately performed, and he was taken to ECMC where he was later declared dead.
Ratin’s friend Shaikh Letif said he watched it happen.
He told 2 On Your Side that Ratin was parked along Cedar Road with his girlfriend and confronted by another man who said he couldn’t park there.
“I hear him on the phone, and I hear the other guy screaming on the phone, and he's just like, ‘What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you?” Letif said.
Letif said Ratin then drove away and asked him to go back to Cedar Road with him to get his girlfriend’s car.
When they returned, the man was still there.
“I turned around for one second, and he shot him right in the chest,” Letif said. “He just falls to the ground, and then he says his last words. His last words were, ‘I'm gonna die.’ How am I supposed to live like that, bro? How?”
Police are still actively investigating the situation and have not yet made an arrest but did say that the shooter called 911 on himself and that he was questioned but is no longer in custody.
Ratin’s family and friends say he was unarmed and are calling his death a hate crime as a result.
“This is a hate crime,” his aunt Rahat Tasnim said. “These people are monsters. They're cold-blooded, and it could happen to anyone.”
Monday’s protest featured prayers and the 100 people in attendance blocking off streets and marching to the shooter’s home.
But no matter how loudly they called out for justice, Ratin’s family feels they’ll never fully get it.
“There will never be another person like him to come into this world who only cares about others and not themselves,” his sister Afia Anjum said. “There is no such thing as justice because even if they caught the killer, will that bring my brother back? He shouldn't have died in the first place.”
Here is a link to a GoFundMe started in Ratin’s honor.