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Fund established to help family of store owner killed on S. Side
YOUNGSTOWN
The Masjid Al-Khair mosque was the most crowded it had been for nearly 25 years Friday when mourners gathered for a service for Abdullah Nagi Mahdi, the owner of a South Side store who was killed in a robbery attempt Wednesday.
Missing from the crowd, however, were some of the people who loved him most: his wife, father and seven daughters, who live in Yemen.
Mahdi, 29, lived and worked here so he could send money home to support them. His mother died just five months ago.
To help support Mahdi’s family, his friends have set up a fund in his name at Huntington Bank. Donations can be made at any branch.
Some friends have been in touch with his father, and say he has started to accept the loss of his son.
“But the first day when we called him and told him what happened, he said, ‘Please send my son to me. I want to die with him. I want to get in the grave with him.’ That’s how much he loved his son,” said Mehmet Kusuni, one of Mahdi’s closest friends.
“And his daughters said, ‘Please bring my father.’”
Kusuni, 35, of Canfield, met Mahdi about 12 years ago at the mosque, and said the two became inseparable.
“He was my best friend. He was like my brother. And I was his best friend too,” Kusuni said. “I would see him every single day, and if I didn’t see him, we would talk on the phone... .We were just always together.”
Kusuni remembers Mahdi as a generous, hospitable, and above all, humble person.
“Abdullah, he was a very loved guy in the community — with his customers, all over. He was a very humble guy. He would never see himself better than anyone,” he said. “If anybody ever needed anything, he would be right there.”
Kusuni believes that kindness would have extended to Larry McDonald, 19, who is accused of shooting and killing Mahdi at his shop, Reemas Fashion, at 2608 South Ave., during the robbery attempt.
“This guy who shot him, he didn’t know him. If he knew Abdullah, Abdullah would have given him anything for free,” Kusuni said.
He knows this because he and Mahdi had a conversation about robberies the night before Mahdi was killed.
Another one of Mahdi’s stores had been robbed recently. Mahdi said he didn’t care what robbers took from the store, Kusuni said, as long as no one was hurt.
The night before Mahdi died, they also talked about the concept of “shahid.”
“In our religion, they say if you die like somebody killed you or you die protecting your land or your business, in our religion it’s like you go to heaven,” he said. “ Without question.”
So he believes Mahdi is certainly in heaven.
“Hopefully I’ll be able to be next to him [in heaven], when I die,” he said.