Man who worked to send money to family killed in robbery

Abdur Rahman had been living and working in the United States for nearly 20 years, sending money to his family in Bangladesh, his impoverished homeland.

Customers and coworkers at the U.S. Gas station on Burlington-Mount Holly Road in Westampton knew him as a pious and friendly man who worked long hours manning the pumps overnight.

Rahman, 50, was shot and killed Monday night during a holdup at the gas station, the first fatality in a string of robberies in the area.

Maureen Hogan, who lives on a farm across from the filling station, near Exit 5 of the New Jersey Turnpike, heard the shots that killed Rahman around 11:15.

"I spoke with him last night," she said yesterday. "He really wanted to talk, but we were in a hurry."

A customer who pulled in after the robbery found Rahman lying near the pumps and called 911.

"He left his country with the aim of raising his family out of their destitute existence," Hogan said. "It's not right. He shouldn't have had to die in such a desolate place."

She said Rahman had eight children, though coworkers said he had six. He had no family in this country and lived in a Burlington City townhouse with several other immigrants who pump for U.S. Gas.

A man who answered the door at the townhouse yesterday said in halting English that three men lived there.

A bed and a dresser were in the living room, but no other furniture or decoration was visible in the townhouse, which belongs to Malkeet Singh, the gas station owner.

Despite a previous holdup at the station, surveillance cameras were not working at the time of the shooting.

"I do it today," Singh said yesterday afternoon. "I put in new cameras."

He and his son, Sukhwindea, said they were suing a contractor that they said had been paid $5,000 to install cameras six months ago.

"That guy took our money, and he never put in the cameras," Sukhwindea Singh said.

Rahman, who immigrated in 1990, had worked nights for four or five years. He was alone at the station Monday. Malkeet Singh said having two employees on that shift was too expensive.

"He never told us he was scared," Sukhwindea Singh said. "If he had told us, we would have done something."

In 2006, an attendant at a U.S. Gas station in Burlington City was killed during a robbery. That station is across the street from the townhouse where Rahman lived.

The victim in that robbery, Kulbir Singh, 70, was found on the pavement near the pumps with stab wounds to the chest and stomach. Police arrested 19-year-old Damian Jasper in the killing.

Malkeet Singh, who is from India, said his employees were "like family."

"We feel very bad. He has no family here," Sukhwindea Singh said of Rahman. "He's a hardworking man. He worked hard for his family in Bangladesh."

As many as eight gas stations have been robbed in Westampton since October, authorities said.

In mid-February, two men beat an attendant at the Westampton U.S. Gas before emptying the cash register.

Two days later, a pair of armed men held up the Citgo at Woodlane and Jacksonville Roads. In mid-March, two masked men robbed a nearby Valero station at gunpoint.

There have been other robberies in Willingboro and Burlington City.

Jack Smith, a spokesman for the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office, said detectives from all those municipalities and the Prosecutor's Office had been "comparing notes" on the robberies.

Louis Forvour, who lives across the street from Rahman's townhouse, said the men who live there were pleasant. They sometimes asked him for rides to the local McDonald's.

But, he said, the neighborhood can be rough. Forvour shook his head at the news of Rahman's violent death.

"You just wonder what's going to happen next," he said.

Anyone with information on the slaying or robberies is asked to call the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office Major Crime Unit at 609-265-5058 or the office's tip line at 609-267-7667.

Information on the cases also can be given to the Westampton police at 609-267-3000, Ext. 156 or 145.