A Dallas mother says her Mother’s Day drive on Interstate 35 turned terrifying when a bullet blasted through her car’s windshield, sliced through one of the passenger seats, and, she says, ended up in the trunk. No one in the car was hurt, but she now wants to know who pulled the trigger and how a live round ended up inside her family vehicle.
Sabah Mooswi told NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth that the bullet shattered the glass and traveled through the cabin, striking a seat where her son was not sitting at the time. Mooswi said she later discovered a bullet in the trunk and asked police to run ballistics testing on it. She told the station she believes she was targeted because she was wearing a hijab. Dallas police told NBC 5 they are currently treating the case as a deadly conduct investigation, but say there is not yet enough evidence to pursue it as a hate crime.
“To the person who attempted to take my life and my child, if you are watching this, know that you are a coward,” Mooswi said in her interview with NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. She said she is speaking out not for sympathy but because she knows the outcome could easily have been far worse.
What ‘deadly conduct’ means under Texas law
Under Texas law, “deadly conduct” is a charge that covers reckless behavior placing another person in imminent danger of serious bodily injury, even if no one is actually hurt. See Justia. Courts can also enter an affirmative finding that the offense was motivated by bias or prejudice, which increases the punishment range if a trier of fact concludes that bias played a role. See FindLaw.
Community context
Mooswi has already been visible in local coverage as an organizer and activist in Dallas, a role that The Dallas Morning News documented earlier this year. The shooting scare comes at a time when Muslim advocacy groups in North Texas have been sounding alarms about safety and rhetoric. The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations recently joined other local organizations in urging officials to denounce inflammatory language and take threats seriously. See the CAIR-Texas statement…