NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - An Afghan man accused of killing two Muslim men in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was driving to Texas when he was arrested, and police said they found a bullet casing in his car that matched those found at one of four crime scenes around the city.

A police detective wrote in a criminal complaint that the suspect, Muhammad Syed, 51, who himself is Muslim, denied that he had anything to do with any of the four killings that have shaken Muslims in Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city.

According to the complaint, Syed told police officers who stopped his car on Monday night that he had been driving to Houston to find a new place for his family to live because things were "bad" in Albuquerque, and he referred to the recent shootings.

He was pulled over about 160km from the Texas state line.

Police said they found a handgun in the car and a spent bullet casing between the windshield of the car and the dashboard.

Tests on the handgun, the spent casing and casings that were found at the scene of a killing on Aug 1 were all a presumptive match, police wrote in the complaint.

Police said the ballistic evidence was part of what led them to arrest Syed on suspicion of carrying out the Aug 1 killing of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, a 27-year-old urban planner.

Syed was also charged in the July 26 killing of Aftab Hussein, 41, who worked at a cafe.

At a news conference on Tuesday, police officials said they considered Syed to also be the "most likely" suspect in the November 2021 killing of Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, as well as in the most recent of the four killings, that of 25-year-old Naeem Hussain on Friday.

Syed told police he had known Naeem Hussain since 2016, according to the complaint, which did not describe the men's relationship further.

Ahmad Assed, president of the city's largest mosque, which several of the victims attended, said he understood that police were examining the possibility that Syed was a Sunni Muslim who may have been motivated by anger over his daughter's marriage to a Shi'ite Muslim.

A police official said at a news conference on Tuesday that they were aware of that information but were not yet sure whether it was a motive for the killings.