Sammar Khan is put into the back of a police car during her arrest for the murder of her estranged husband. (Mugshot inset from Bucks County District Attorney’s Office; Screenshot of arrest from LevittownNow, NewtownPANow & New Hope Free Press)
A 40-year-old woman ended her tumultuous relationship with her estranged husband with two shots to the torso and one to the head as onlookers watched at a public wharf park on Tuesday morning, authorities said.
Deputies said they found Sammar Khan in bloody clothing and the body of her husband, Faisal Iqbal, 38, with gunshot wounds in a grassy area near a parking lot of the Bristol Borough Wharf in Pennsylvania. A Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9 mm gun was found in the area with blood on the slide, prosecutors said.
Khan faces charges of criminal homicide, possession of an instrument of crime, and recklessly endangering another person. She was being held at the Bucks County Correctional Facility without bail.
Witnesses told authorities Khan and Iqbal had been talking in the coastline area, and Khan was speaking loudly in another language before a pop sound was heard, authorities said.
Iqbal, who had been sitting, brushed at himself as if brushing something off, according to the probable cause affidavit filed in Khan’s arrest. Iqbal stood up and began to wrestle with Khan. More gunshots were heard.
The two then began to walk from the coastline to the parking lot area, where Iqbal told a witness to call 911.
Khan allegedly shot Iqbal two times and he collapsed in a grassy area between the water and the parking lot. Khan then allegedly approached him while he was on the ground, raised a firearm at him with one hand, and shot him twice in the torso, the affidavit said.
“Khan then moved the gun to the area of Iqbal’s head and fired an additional shot,” the document said.
After the shooting, Khan allegedly called her boyfriend, saying she had killed Faisal and needed him to pick up her son from the wharf, the affidavit said.
“Khan stated that the pair were at the part to discuss their relationship,” according to the affidavit. “Khan said the meeting did not go well and that she killed Iqbal.”
Khan’s boyfriend told police he had been in a relationship with Khan for over a year and “knew Iqbal and Khan to have been in a previous relationship which had become tumultuous,” the affidavit said.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Khan had successfully applied for a protection from abuse order against her husband in February 2022, alleging he threatened her.
He violated that order two months later by driving to her home and parking outside, the paper reported, citing court records. He was ordered to spend two months in jail for the violation. He served 23 days before being released again, the newspaper reported.
Sammar Khan’s brother, Imran Khan, told the paper that his sister told him Iqbal berated and sometimes beat her.
“He gave her a lot of trouble, but I know she didn’t want to kill him,” Khan told the newspaper. “It had to be self-defense, I know it. She was always thinking about her kids.”
The couple got married in their native Pakistan in 2009, had three children together and raised a fourth child of Khan’s from a previous relationship, the Inquirer reported.
The couple had filed for divorce, and Khan had contested Iqbal’s claim for custody of the couple’s three biological children, the paper said, citing his attorney, Iriana Blithstein, who did not immediately return a message seeking comment from Law&Crime.
Blithstein said Iqbal loved his children, and his murder was a “tragedy beyond words,” The Inquirer reported.
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