Two nonprofit groups are holding a vigil in Dupont Circle this evening for 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen, who police say was struck with a baseball bat, abducted, and found dead in a Loudoun County pond on Sunday afternoon.

Police charged 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres for the murder, which took place around 3:40 a.m. when he got into an argument with a boy on a bike and then drove his car over a curb.

The boy was traveling in a group of about 15 teens, including Hassanen, who were en route to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Fairfax County to observe Ramadan.

Witnesses told police that the teens scattered after Torres drove his car on the curb, but he caught up with some of them in a parking lot a short while after. They say he got out of his car and began chasing them with a baseball bat, striking Hassanen. He then took her to another location in Loudoun County, according to police.

Patrol officers canvassed the area searching for Hassanen and her assailant. Police found Torres by identifying his car around 5:15 a.m. and took him into custody.

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told NBC Washington that Torres, who is originally from El Salvador, was living in the U.S. illegally, and officials filed a detainer against him.

Officials recovered Hassanen’s body from a pond in Loudoun County on Sunday evening. Autopsy results showed that she suffered from blunt force trauma to the upper body.

Police say they have no evidence that Torres’s actions were motivated by hate or discrimination. Instead, they say his “anger over the encounter” with the teens led to the violence, and they are calling the incident an act of road rage.

Still, the Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment and the DC Justice for Muslims Coalition said in a Facebook post that they are hosting the vigil this evening to not only mourn the loss of Hassanen, but to bring attention to the fact that “right now in America, Black Muslim women, especially those from marginalized communities, are continuously targeted and attacked with malicious intent.”

In 2016, the Council on American-Islamic Relations recorded a 57 percent increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents compared to 2015. During the same period, CAIR reports a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

The groups say that Hassanen’s murder “is yet another wake up call in the chain of events of Muslim women viciously attacked in hate crimes across the country.”

The vigil will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Dupont Circle.

The Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment is also hosting vigils for Hassanen today in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Detroit, among other cities.

Filed Under: Darwin Martinez Torres, dupont circle, mosque, muslim teen, nabra, nabra Hassanen, vigil,