A gunman who had posted anti-religious messages on Facebook and quarreled with neighbors was charged with killing three young Muslims in what police said on Wednesday was a dispute over parking and possibly a hate crime.
© REUTERS/Chris Keane Namee Barakat and his wife Layla Barakat, parents of shooting victim Deah Shaddy Barakat, react as a video is played during a vigil on the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, a full-time paralegal student from Chapel Hill, was charged with first-degree murder in Tuesday's shootings around 5 p.m. two miles (three km) from the University of North Carolina campus.
The victims were newlyweds Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, a University of North Carolina dental student, and his wife Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Yusor's sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19. All were involved in humanitarian aid programs.
Students at UNC, where Yusor Mohammad was going to join her husband as a student later this year, gathered on Wednesday for an evening vigil and prayer service.
The suspect, in handcuffs and orange jail garb, appeared briefly on Wednesday before a Durham County judge who ordered him held without bail pending a March 4 probable cause hearing.
© REUTERS/Chris KeaneNamee Barakat, father of shooting victim Deah Shaddy Barakat, cries as a video is played during a vigil on the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina February 11, 2015.
Police said a preliminary investigation showed the motive to be a parking dispute. They said Hicks, who has no criminal history in Chapel Hill, turned himself in and was cooperating.
The killings drew international condemnation
. The shooting sparked the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter on social media with many posters assailing what they called a lack of news coverage."I guess that Muslims are only newsworthy when behind the gun, not in front," tweeted a poster who goes by the handle @biebersrivals.
Muslim activists demanded authorities investigate a possible motive of religious hatred.
"We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case," Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said in a statement.
Hundreds of people gathered on the UNC campus Wednesday evening for a candlelight vigil for the victims.
University and city leaders urged inclusiveness during a time of unease, while a brother of one of the victims called for nonviolence.
'EXECUTION-STYLE MURDERS'The killings occurred in a condominium complex in a wooded area filled with two-story buildings. Neighbors said parking spaces were often a point of contention.
"I have seen and heard (Hicks) be very unfriendly to a lot of people in this community," said Samantha Maness, 25, a community college student. But she said she had never seen him show animosity along religious lines.
© REUTERS/Chris KeaneA woman places flowers near a building where three young Muslims were killed on Tuesday, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina February 11, 2015.
On Facebook, Hicks' profile picture reads "Atheists for Equality" and he frequently posted quotes critical of religion. On Jan. 20 he posted a photo of a .38-caliber revolver that he said was loaded and belonged to him.
Hicks' wife, Karen Hicks, told reporters at a news conference that her husband had been locked in a longstanding dispute over parking and the killings had nothing to do with religion. She said Hicks was not hateful and believed "everyone is equal."
Barakat's family urged the shooting be investigated as a hate crime and said the three were killed with shots to the head.
"Today, we are crying tears of unimaginable pain over the execution-style murders," Barakat's older sister Suzanne told reporters. She said her brother was light-hearted and loved basketball.
The incident appeared to be isolated and not part of a targeted campaign against North Carolina Muslims, Ripley Rand, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, told a news conference with local police officials.
Imam Abdullah Antepli, chief representative of Muslim affairs at Duke University, told the news conference it may or may not have been a hate crime and called for an easing of tensions.
A TURNING POINT?© REUTERS/Chris KeaneA makeshift memorial for Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad and Yusor's sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, who were killed by a gunman, is pictured inside of the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina February 11, 2015.
Groups including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the local Raleigh-based Muslims for Social Justice called for a federal investigation into possible hate crimes.
"I hope this terrible tragedy will be a turning point that brings the reality home that if we keep demonizing Muslims and equating their religion to terrorism, it will lead to more attacks," said Manzoor Cheema, co-founder of Muslims for Social Justice.
Barakat, an American citizen of Syrian origin, wrote in his last Facebook post about providing free dental supplies and food to homeless people in downtown Durham. He was raising funds for a trip to Turkey with 10 other dentists to provide free fillings, root canals and oral hygiene instruction to Syrian refugee children.
His sister-in-law, Abu-Salha, a sophomore at nearby North Carolina State University, was involved in making multimedia art to spread positive messages about being Muslim American.
Students at UNC said the three friends came from two of the most prominent Muslim families in the Raleigh area.
"Deah was a very proud Muslim American. He was proud of all his identities," said Sofia Dard, a 21-year-old senior psychology major. She said Muslims were used to occasional harassment in post-9/11 America, but the shooting "adds a whole level of seriousness."
Source: Reuters
(Additional reporting by Marti Anne Maguire in Raleigh, Laila Kearney, Franklin Paul and Curtis Skinner; Writing by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Howard Goller and Cynthia Osterman)
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"It's absolutely insulting, insensitive and outrageous that the first thing they come out and say and issue a statement that this is a parking dispute... To call it a parking dispute when in fact no one was parked in even in that visitor's parking spot that does not belong to him, is outrageous to me, and it's insulting and it trivializes their murders," ~ Suzanne Barakat (Blessing). [Link]
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"I doubt very much that anti-Muslim hate didn’t play some role in this attack. I say that based on a few factors. One is my conversation with two close friends of the victims and the comments made by the father of the two sisters killed. Second, we can’t ignore that on the day of the shooting we saw wall-to-wall media coverage about the death of the American aid worker and ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller. And finally, we have to factor in the overall rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric we have witnessed on both the right and the left recently.
One of Yusor’s close friends, Amira Ata, who like Yusor wears a hijab, explained to me by phone that when she heard that her friends were killed, she immediately knew it was Hicks.
Ata didn’t believe that Hicks was really angry about the parking spot because she explained that there were plenty of spots designated for visitors at the complex.... Overall, Ata said she believes that Hicks killed them because they were the only Muslims in the apartment complex. “They were targeted because they’re different and this is a hate crime,” she stated emphatically.
She also said that on the day of the murders, Deah had just returned by bus. The only one with a car was the younger sister Razan, who had already parked earlier in the day. The point being: There was no “parking dispute” in close proximity to the actual murders.
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[Link] "A woman who called 911 described hearing gunshots as she walked through the complex of apartments and condominiums adjacent to the William and Ida Friday Center.
“I heard about eight shots go off in an apartment – I don’t know the number – about three girls, more than one girl, screaming, and then there was nothing,” the unidentified caller said. “And then I heard about three more shots go off.” ...
The women’s father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice in Clayton, said regardless of what prompted the shooting Tuesday night, Hicks’ underlying animosity toward Barakat and Abu-Salha was based on their religion and culture.
“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Abu-Salha said. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”
Abu-Salha said his daughter, who lived next door to Hicks, wore a Muslim head scarf and told her family a week ago that she had “a hateful neighbor.”
“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’ ” he said" [Link]
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Obama’s silence on Chapel Hill murders already speaks volumes, tepid, belated condemnation of Chapel Hill murders does little to ease fears [Link] [Link]
Zionist Hate Group SPLC Connected To Radical Leftist Shooter At UNC Chapel Hill [Link]
does hicks the same genetic code as this soulless chosenite monster? [Link]
Chapel Hill Shooting and the ‘New Atheist’ Neocons [Link]