A Chicago woman who talked openly on TikTok about her divorce was fatally shot on Monday in her apartment by her ex-husband, who then turned the gun on himself.
Raheel Ahmad, 36, travelled from his home in Georgia to murder his ex-wife in her home in Streeterville, on the Near North Side of Chicago.
Officers arrived at the building around 4.30pm after police requested a well-being check on Mr Ahmad as his family had reported him missing from the Atlanta suburb, where he lived. Once police arrived at the apartment he turned the gun on himself.
An officer told Chicago police that Mr Ahmad and his wife, 29-year-old Sania Khan, were “going through a divorce."
But two friends told the Chicago Sun Times that their divorce had been finalised for two months.
Officers found the victim unresponsive near the door with a gunshot wound to the back of the head and dried blood on her face, a source said.
As officers knocked on the door, they heard a single gunshot and “a verbal groan."
Reports state that they then found the shooter in a bedroom with a shot to his head, a gun in his hand and a suicide note.
Ms Khan was open about the troubles she felt following their divorce, with one TikTok post saying: "It's painful to walk away from someone you once loved. But it's even more painful to love someone who is careless with your heart."
Another said: "Going through a divorce as a South Asian Woman feels like you failed at life sometimes. The way the community labels you, the lack of emotional support you receive, and the pressure to stay with someone because 'what will people say' is isolating. It makes it harder for women to leave a marriage that they shouldn't have been in, to begin with."
An unnamed friend of Khan's from school told the Chicago Sun Times that her death “still doesn’t seem real.”
He said she added so much light to his life and "you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would say something bad about" her.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help pay for funeral expenses.
