Pakistani American professor Javed Bhutto shot dead in Washington
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ISLAMABAD - Javed Bhutto, a caregiver to mentally disabled adults, got home from work about 11 that morning with bags of groceries in his Toyota Corolla. After his overnight shift at a residential facility, he had stopped in a supermarket with a list from his wife. In the parking lot of the small condo complex where the couple lived, he stepped out of his car in the chill March air, opened the trunk and reached for his bundles.
A man identified by Washington, D.C., police as Hilman Jordan - who had killed before for no sane reason and was locked in psychiatric wards for 17 years - walked up behind Bhutto, pulling a 9mm semiautomatic from a pocket of his coat. Spreading his feet in a combat stance, he aimed the weapon with a two-handed grip at close range. Bhutto, leaning into the trunk, didn't see him coming.
Although they were neighbors in City View Condos, in southeast Washington, D.C., the two were barely acquainted. Bhutto, a few days shy of his 64th birthday, was a former philosophy professor in Pakistan who found a new career in his adopted country, working in group homes. Jordan, 45, acquitted by reason of insanity in an unprovoked fatal shooting in 1998, had been released from St. Elizabeths Hospital and was renting a condo largely at taxpayer expense.
Javed Bhutto in Istanbul in 2015. Bhutto was shot and killed in March this year in Washington, D.C. (WP)
The first slug whizzed past Bhutto, striking the Toyota, and he spun around aghast, holding up his hands. The attacker tried to squeeze off another round, but the Smith & Wesson jammed. He racked the slide again and again, ejecting unspent cartridges onto the pavement, as Bhutto ran, arms flailing, toward the parking lot gate. The gunman caught him there, pistol-whipped him until he fell, kicked him twice in the head and fired a bullet into his heart.
