Police in Minnesota have arrested a suspect wanted in the shooting death of a Portland man in a Brighton Avenue apartment in November.
Abdirahman Huessin Haji-Hassan of Portland was arrested in Minneapolis on Dec. 19 on a warrant obtained by Portland police charging the 24-year-old with the willful and intentional murder of 23-year-old Richard Lobor, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Marchese said Friday.
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Lobor, Portland’s only homicide victim of 2014, was shot in the head Nov. 21 in the doorway of an apartment at 214 Brighton Ave. in the Princeton Village apartment complex, where someone called 911 around 9:05 p.m.
Portland police were quick to call Lobor’s death a homicide, sending out a news release within an hour and a half of the 911 call reporting his death. Since then, they have refused to say whether they had a suspect or any leads in the case.
Until Friday, Portland police Lt. James Sweatt, the department’s spokesman, had said there were no suspects in the case or any new developments, even after Haji-Hassan had been arrested. On Friday, Sweatt said police did not reveal Haji-Hassan’s arrest sooner because the warrant had remained sealed by a judge’s order. He said that seal was lifted Friday. He would not comment further on what led police to tie Haji-Hassan to the shooting or how they located him in Minnesota, saying police would announce more details next week.
Marchese, who heads the criminal division of the Attorney General’s Office, said that Haji-Hassan already has appeared in court in Minnesota on a charge of being a fugitive from justice in Maine and waived his right to oppose being extradited back to Maine to face the murder charge.
Marchese, reached by phone Friday, said she did not have more details to release about Haji-Hassan or what led to his arrest. She said she did not know when Haji-Hassan would return to Maine to face the murder charge.
Haji-Hassan, of 133 Eben Hill Road, Portland, has an adult criminal record dating to 2009. He was convicted of charges including a bail violation in 2009, disorderly conduct in 2010 theft in 2011 for which he was sent to jail for 90 days, and another theft in 2013, according to a Maine State Bureau of Identification database. Haji-Hassan is sometimes referred to in those records as Abdi Hassan.
Lobor was 12 when he and his family arrived in Portland as refugees from war-torn Sudan. The eldest of six children of Robert Lobor and Christina Marring, Lobor lived in the family home in Portland’s Munjoy Hill at the time of his death.
Christians in a predominantly Muslim land, the Lobors left Sudan at the height of political strife during the second civil war in the East African nation.
Lobor began getting into trouble with the law not long after he arrived. He had multiple juvenile offenses on his record that led to him first being committed to the Long Creek Youth Development Center for juvenile offenders in September 2007, when he was 16.
He was charged with the armed robbery of a convenience store in Portland with a loaded handgun in his waistband when he was 17, which ultimately led to him spending most of his adult life in prison.
Lobor was killed during his longest stint of freedom as an adult since being released from Maine State Prison on the robbery charge on July 3.
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