On the night of May 31, 2025, 34-year-old Awal Kistan, a man from San Antonio, stepped outside his apartment at The Fredd Townhomes on Dartbrook Drive near Fredericksburg Road after receiving a phone call. Within moments, shots rang out. Officers arrived around 11 p.m. to find the 34-year-old victim on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds; he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Bexar County Medical Examiner identified him as Awal Kistan and ruled his death a homicide by multiple gunshot wounds.
In the weeks that followed, investigators traced a digital trail pointing toward a former coworker who had publicly aired a grievance over money. By late August, police arrested 23-year-old Naqibullah Habibzoi of Houston and charged him with murder in the killing of 34-year-old Awal Noor Kiftan—an alternative rendering of the victim’s name that appears in court and media records—outside the same Northwest Side apartment complex. According to reporting on the arrest affidavit, detectives linked Habibzoi to the crime through a series of TikTok posts in which he accused the 34-year-old victim of taking $31,000 and vowed revenge, along with call records, vehicle location data, and license plate reader hits showing travel from Houston to San Antonio on the day of the shooting. A witness told detectives that the victim went outside after being asked to meet a woman; investigators later noted the woman’s name matched someone connected to the suspect.
Further details reported from the case materials describe how social media footage and comments—including videos referencing the debt and posts about “never” moving on without taking revenge—drew investigators to Habibzoi, who initially claimed his account was hacked. Authorities also documented that during a recorded Pashto-language phone call the suspect allegedly admitted he “finished” the 34-year-old man because he would not return the money. As of those reports, Habibzoi remained in custody facing the murder charge; investigators were also scrutinizing the role of the woman believed to have lured the 34-year-old victim outside just before the gunfire.
