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Seattle, February 4, 2004 (AP) – An immigrant taxi driver who helped schoolchildren in his Somali community was honored by friends and co-workers as he was buried in his adopted homeland.
Hassan Muse Farah, 39, was laid to rest Monday. He was shot to death early Saturday in his Yellow Cab. Police had no suspects.
"He was very active, very good people," said a close friend, Adam Ashoor. "Any assistance you needed, he'd give it. A very polite person. We don't know how this can happen."
About 200 people, many of them immigrants, gathered in bitter cold for Muslim burial services at Dar-o-Rahma — Arabic for "House of Mercy" — cemetery east of Kent. Dozens of taxicabs filled parking lots and lined the nearby street.
Farah worked as a bilingual teacher's assistant, helping Somali students three days a week at Rainier View Elementary in the Skyline area and two days a week at Cooper Elementary in West Seattle.
He also served as emissary to their parents in the Somali community, estimated at between 15,000 and 20,000 people in Seattle.
"He was Mr. Hassan to our children," said Rainier View Principal Cathy Thompson. "He was a quiet man but very, very dignified. There are many here who are feeling a great loss."
Ali-Salaam Mahmoud, who knew Farah for five years, said he was very dedicated.
"He worked closely with children because he wanted them to be able to exceed in school so they could see opportunities beyond cab driving," Mahmoud said.
Farah drove a taxicab on weekends to earn for extra money. He was married with three children, ages 4, 3 and 1.
"When people have given me condolences, they say: '(The killers) didn't just take your husband from you, they took him from the community,'" his wife, Asiya Hussein, said through an interpreter.
Farah came to the United States in 1993 from a refugee camp in Kenya after fleeing his war-ravaged homeland. In 1999, he met and married his wife in Minneapolis, and they decided to make their home in Seattle.
"Imagine, he escaped the bullets in Somalia only to find them right here," said Deeq Farah, who is not a relative but handled weekday driving of the cab used by Hassan Farah.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Farah was in the news when federal agents raided the Seattle offices of Barakat Wire Transfer, which was housed in a Somali-run grocery store and used by local Somali immigrants to send money home to Africa. Agents believed that Barakat and similar wire-transfer services in other cities might have been involved in laundering money for the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Farah was briefly detained, questioned and released. No charges were filed. Mohammed Ali, a longtime friend, said Farah only worked as a clerk at Barakat.
Abdulhakim Hashi, board president of the Somali Community Services Coalition, said he did not want to speculate on whether Farah's death was related to his former job at Barakat.
"We think it was done by common criminals," Hashi said.
Yellow Cab officials declined to comment on the shooting, saying Farah was a contractor, not an employee.
Police said officers found Farah in his cab within 45 seconds after gunshots were reported. The person who called police reported seeing a small light-colored car and a small dark-colored car leaving the area.
Seattle police said they had no leads and knew of no motive.
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