FBI offers $15,000 for information about gang-related ambush that killed an Iraqi driver in Portland

Shafaq News/ The FBI is offering a reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to an arrest or conviction in a December shooting that killed a 23-year-old Uber driver in Northeast Portland.

Dhulfigar Kareem Mseer, a refugee from Iraq, was shot shortly after midnight Dec. 11 while he was working. He was waiting to pick up a rider outside a home on Northeast Stafford Street near 11th Avenue when multiple people fired at least 60 bullets at his car. The shooters got into two cars and fled, police said.

Mseer suffered irreversible brain damage and died several days later at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.

Police in December said they suspected the shooting was a gang-related ambush meant to target someone else.

Shell casings found at the scene matched those found at other gang-related shootings in the area, FBI officials said Wednesday.

Crime Stoppers of Oregon also has offered a $2,500 reward for information related to this case.

“Day after day we see a rising tide of indiscriminate violence — much of it against innocent people just trying to go to work and come back home to their families safely,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Kieran L. Ramsey said in a statement. “Now is the time to be brave and come forward.”

Mseer’s family also urged anyone with information to come forward.

“We lost a brother, a son, a bread winner, a husband, and the world lost a good and decent man,” the family said in a statement. “We can’t rest knowing his killer has not yet faced the justice they deserve.”

Mseer moved to Portland from Iraq about five years ago and was living with his parents and two sisters in Southeast Portland. He had recently married while on a trip to Iraq and was completing paperwork for his wife to join him in the U.S., an uncle, Alaa Adham, told The Oregonian/OregonLive in December.