The windy road to Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s Hixson home is peppered with churches and subdivisions.
In Colonial Shores, where Abdulazeez once played with the neighborhood children, American flags hang above neatly manicured gardens. It’s the kind of place where teenage boys get paid cash to run lawnmowers in the heat and retirees wave at drivers while they tend to their tomatoes.
And, by all accounts, Abdulazeez and his family fit in here.
They smiled. They were friendly, neighbors say. Youssef Abdulazeez was a soil engineer for the City of Chattanooga. His only son and four daughters were bright and handsome; two had engineering degrees and another was working on her masters.
Rasmia Abdulazeez, who has a soft, round face in pictures, was like most mothers, celebrating her children on Facebook. When Abdulazeez graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga she posted a picture of him in a cap and gown and wrote a blessing. Friends ogled over her recently married daughter, Deena, who had a Palestinian-themed wedding but wore a mermaid-cut wedding dress that showed her slender figure.