Three Muslim Students Killed in North Carolina

A Chapel Hill, N.C. man was arrested Wednesday for the shooting deaths of three Muslim students in their apartment in the same complex as his. The three victims were newlyweds Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and Abu-Salha’s sister, 19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Barakat was a graduate dental student at U.N.C., and the younger Abu-Salha sister was an undergraduate at nearby N.C. State. The elder Abu-Salha planned on enrolling at U.N.C. in the fall.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was arrested after turning himself in to police. He was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and is being held without bail. Police have said their initial investigation suggested the murders had to do with an ongoing conflict over a parking space, but that they weren’t ruling out the possibility of a hate crime.

“Our investigators are exploring what could have motivated Mr. Hicks to commit such a senseless and tragic act,” police said in a statement. “We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if this is the case.”

Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of the two women murdered and a psychiatrist in nearby Clayton, N.C., slammed the idea that a parking dispute was the reason for the murders. He told the News and Observer, “It was execution style, a bullet in every head. 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.”

The hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter has emerged in the wake of the murders, and friends of the victims have been sharing memories on social media.