The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a shooting and carjacking early Wednesday that took the life of a young Iraqi refugee.

Ahmed Zainuldeen had been in the United States for less than a year when he was shot and killed while trying to stop a group of teens from stealing his car in the parking lot of their apartment building near South Quebec Street and East Yale Avenue, according to his brother, Mahmood. He said he came out and saw his brother lying on the ground, dead.

“My brother’s dead by gunshot… just like that,” said Mahmood. “It didn’t take 10 minutes.”

The sheriff’s office believes four male suspects, all possibly under age 18, shot Zainuldeen. They released the below photo of his car, a 2012 Hyundai Sonata with Colorado license plate CLY X69.

“Ahmed was just truly, he was bright and curious and just so smart and so excited to be here and to start his life in America,” said Anna Hanel, a caseworker with the African Community Center. The nonprofit helps settle refugees in the Denver area.

“They are the kindest, just most respectful people,” Hanel said of the Zainuldeen family. “And this family waited so long to get here, to get here to safety, to be refugees in the United States and I am completely heartbroken and just gutted to see that this happened to this family nine to 10 months in the United States.”

“We came here thinking this was a safe state, but we spend 10 months or maybe less than 10 months and my brother’s got killed,” Mahmood said. “That’s all the story.”

If anyone has any information about the carjacking, please call 911 or dispatch at 303-795-4711.

For more on this story, and others, visit The Denver Gazette’s news partners 9News.com.