Unidentified gunmen killed Hameed, a reporter with the English-language daily The Nation and its Urdu-language television channel, Waqt, while he was parking his car at his house.
Media accounts of the attack varied. Beena Sarwar, a media and human rights activist, looked closely into the murder and described what she found to CPJ: "His family rushed out on hearing the gunshots and found Hameed lying in a pool of blood. The bullets, fired at close range, had pierced his neck and shoulder." Doctors pronounced the journalist dead on arrival at Benazir Bhutto Hospital.
Hameed was well-known and held in high regard. He was fluent in English, Urdu, and Punjabi, and frequently appeared on Al-Jazeera, analyzing political developments in Pakistan.
The day after the attack, Information Minister Qamar-uz-Zaman Kaira told the official Associated Press of Pakistan that "sick-minded criminals must have committed the murder of a journalist in Rawalpindi" and he promised "to leave no stone unturned in investigating the heinous crime." Rawalpindi police later suspended their investigation without resolution, news reports said.