Doctor killed in Southwest Philly was driving for DoorDash to support wife’s medical career, family says
Md Mahfuzul Haque, a doctor and Bangladesh native, moved to Philadelphia to support his wife's medical career. He was killed during a robbery this month, police say.
For Minara Rahman and her husband, a move to Philadelphia was supposed to be a fresh start.
She and Md Mahfuzul Haque met while attending medical school in their native Bangladesh in 2000, married soon after, and remained nearly inseparable for 21 years, most of them spent in Canada.
Their love story came to a tragic conclusion early this month when Haque, a 43-year-old doctor who was driving for DoorDash to support Rahman’s optometry career, was shot and killed during a robbery outside a Southwest Philadelphia home.
It was one of at least three shootings involving food delivery drivers in the city this summer.
Last week, prosecutors charged 15-year-old Zakah Johnson with murder, robbery, and related crimes in connection with the killing, and police are looking for two other people they believe are involved.
“I still can’t believe it,” said Rahman, 43. “I’m crying, I’m mourning, I’m in grief, but I’m still not believing he’s not with me.”
Philadelphia had only recently become home for Rahman, Haque, and their 14-year-old son.
In 2023, the family moved from Vancouver, where much of Haque’s extended family lives, as Rahman began her studies at Drexel University’s optometry school, she said.
She and Haque had both been practicing physicians in Bangladesh and worked in the healthcare industry in Canada, where they moved in 2011 after receiving skilled immigration visas.
In Philadelphia, Rahman saw the opportunity to get an American medical license and earn enough to support her family.
Haque, she said, sacrificed his own professional ambitions to support that move, doing odd jobs and driving for DoorDash to earn money while she completed school.
Rahman graduated from Drexel last year and began practical training while the family worked to extend their U.S. visas. Part of her work involved conducting eye exams for people seeking firearms licenses, she said.
“It was me who wanted to do something more, and he always supported me,” Rahman said of her husband. “Without him, it would have been impossible.”
Though Rahman worried that Philadelphia could be dangerous, she said, she and Haque believed that life in the United States would offer their family safety and security.
She no longer thinks so.
Just days after Haque’s killing, police made an arrest in a separate homicide case involving a food delivery driver. They accused a 14-year-old Queen Village teen of luring the man, Anshul Kuncha, to an abandoned North Philadelphia rowhouse, where he was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head.
And on Tuesday, police said, a 31-year-old man delivering for DoorDash was shot in the hand after getting into an argument with two women in Northern Liberties. He was placed in stable condition at a nearby hospital.
Since the July 7 shooting of Haque, Rahman has been in touch with police seeking to gather more information about the shooting that left her husband dead.
Officers responded to the 1000 block of South Ithan Street in the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood around 9:30 p.m. that evening to find Haque on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head.
His car was still running, investigators said, and a bag of delivery food was found nearby. They soon identified three suspects, masked men wearing dark clothing.
Johnson, of East Mount Airy, was charged with murder in Haque’s killing last Friday while he was already in custody in connection with an unrelated crime. He is being held in prison without bail.
The teen is expected to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on August 10.
Rahman said she was struck by the fact that the gunman who police say took her husband’s life is so young - just a year older than her own son.
“I can’t imagine any boy like my son’s age treating anybody else like that,” she said. “I have no idea what they were thinking — what was their motive, and how did they get that firearm that easily?”
Haque was buried in Vancouver, where Rahman and her son moved to be near his extended family, and she has abandoned her pursuit of a medical career in the United States.
In an interview, she spoke sorrowfully of plans abandoned: a family trip to Florida, an Atlantic City wedding anniversary celebration set for the last week of July.
And each day Rahman said she struggles with nagging worry that by moving her family to Philadelphia for her career, she was somehow responsible for her husband’s death.
The only thing she wants now is justice.
“We both did counseling for tons of patients,” Rahman said, recalling the years of challenging medical work caring for people at their worst moments.
“Now I’m in that situation,” she said. “I can’t take it anymore, and I need help.”
