Man Murders Bisexual Muslim Wife and Police Officer in Heartbreaking Shootout

An artful dance instructor. A pharmacology major at Washington and Jefferson College within Washington, Pennsylvania. A woman of color—Egyptian nationality. A university basketball teammate and track runner. A Muslim. An LGBTQ+ community member. A prodigious scholar of language, fluent in an accomplished six dialects: American English, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and Russian. A mother-to-be, six months along within her pregnancy.

Twenty-eight-year old Dalia Elhefny Sabae was herself as a result of her collective potpourri of fragments, each embedding into one another as a mosaic of her characteristic humanness.

However, regrettably, Sabae’s exemplary collage was devastatingly tattered as a repercussion of forty-seven-year old Michael Cwiklinski, who murdered his spouse and her unborn fetus on November 10th, 2016, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and ensuingly committed suicide.  Moreover, Cwiklinski committed homicide against a police office attending to a call for a domestic dispute between Sabae and her husband, Officer Scott Leslie Bashioum, who was fifty-two years of age, a father to four children, and a seven-year law enforcement veteran.  Officer Bashioum’s partner, Officer James Saieva was wounded in the line of duty, but is anticipated to recover.

“‘[Officer Bashioum] is a great guy, top to bottom. One of the best people I know inside and out,’ said District Judge David Mark, [who knew his family]. ‘I can’t imagine what the family is going through.'”

Tragically, abusive altercations between Cwiklinski and Sabae—Cwiklinski evidently being the perpetrator—was not uncharted territory to the legal system.

“Canonsburg Police Chief Al Coghill said that police were often called to fights at the home where the shooting occurred.”

In consequence of Cwiklinski’s serial, or repetitive, physical, mental, and emotional abuse, CBS News affirmed sources that expressed Sabae’s pharmaceutical colleagues’ anxiety regarding Cwiklinski and his capabilities of injuring Sabae and her fellow employees.  Therefore, Sabae filed Protection Form Abuse Orders (PFAs) with a court of law, depicting her husband as a hazard to her safety.

There had previously been numerous police reports documented that recounted arguments between Cwiklinski and Sabae that warrants paralyzing nightmares for its onlookers.

“According to KDKA, in one incident [in 2015], his wife states, ‘We were at Wal-Mart and I asked him if I could help him with a bag and he said, ‘No.’ He hit me in the face with the bag. It had heavy cans in it. The hospital report indicated I had a closed head injury.'”

In July of 2016, Cwiklinski, who had been legally charged with harassment, pled guilty to the allegations, and was sentenced by a judge to anger management coursework and a professional mental health evaluation. Attorney David Wolf had represented Cwiklinski throughout his court case, yet counselled Sabae to file a second PFA following her discontinuing the prior order within 2015.

In spite of Cwiklinski’s “rehabilitation,” “[KDKA] reports that in late-October, another emergency PFA was filed. Cwiklinski’s wife states: ‘The defendant [her husband] was extremely intoxicated. He took a lot of my belongings and locked himself in a room with them. The defendant got angry and destroyed a lot of my personal documents and some objects around the house. The defendant left, and when he was leaving, he was saying that I and our baby, that I am pregnant with, have to die.'”

Upon Cwiklinski’s unmanageable episode and the freshly certified PFA, Sabae was displaced to an emergency shelter, where she resided for an unidentified duration, and ultimately, ventured back to her Canonsburg household.

“Investigators say once her husband was served with the recent papers, he snapped. Officials say he grabbed a long rifle and drove to his wife’s home.”

Furthermore, “KDKA sources also say that Cwiklinski tried to turn his car into a bomb, loaded it with gas cans and propane tanks. Police say he shot up the vehicle outside the house trying to make it explode, but it did not.”

Throughout news analysis, it has become discernible that the media has, unfortunately, erased Sabae’s imperative attributes. Whether the slaughter was a manifestation of Cwiklinski’s resentment toward her bisexual orientation, Egyptian nationality, Muslim religious faith, or solely his deranged cold-heartedness, the brutality enacted unto Sabae was a brutality enacted unto Egyptians, Muslims, and the LGBTQ+ community.  However, conveniently, these actualities have been deserted and unacknowledged by a slew of news sources.

The Affinity Magazine staff addresses Dalia Sabae’s and Officer Scott Bashioum’s beloveds with our condolences.  May you seek restfulness and comfort throughout this lamentable adversity.