Following Tuesday's tragic triple-homicide and subsequent media attention, community members mourned the loss of three local college students.
Shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday, Chapel Hill resident Craig Stephen Hicks shot and killed newlyweds Deah Barakat, 23, and Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha , 21, in their apartment, as well as Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha, 19, Yusor Abu-Salha's sister. Though police have not announced an official motive for the killings, many have expressed concern that the incident was a hate crime, due to the Muslim faith of the three victims.
Hicks—who lives on the same block as Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha—has been arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He is being held without bond in the Durham County Jail.
Barakat was a second-year student in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Dentistry, and his wife planned to attend the school beginning this Fall. Her sister was a student at North Carolina State University.
The students' deaths were met by many with an outpouring of grief, both locally and nationally—with thousands attending a candlelight vigil at UNC Wednesday evening and the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter used hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter.
"Our thoughts and prayers go out to the UNC and NC State community, particularly the members of the Muslim community there. There is a tendency to say this is a nice place, these eruptions of violence don¹t belong here. And yet here we are," Omid Safi, director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center, wrote in an email Wednesday. "This is, in all of the heartbreak and violence and sadness, where we are. This is today's America."
The story quickly spread beyond Chapel Hill, making national and international headlines, with CBS, NBC and ABC each discussing the shootings in their 6:30 p.m. news broadcast. For some, the coverage pointed to questions of how the media covers crimes involving Muslim individuals.
"I think, compared to prior events, the media coverage of Muslim victims is increasing, but unfortunately, if this was a Muslim perpetrator who—God forbid—shot three different people, I believe we'd see 24 hour, wall-to-wall coverage of this alleged terrorist activity or extremist behavior," said Ayoub Ouederni, vice-president of UNC's Muslim Students Association. "I think that is a reality we face, but I do see hope in the future. People are covering this, talking about hate crimes."
Though much of the reaction on social media focused on the idea that the shooting was a hate crime, police said the killings were likely motivated by other factors—though they noted that the possibility of a hate crime would continue to be investigated.
“Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking,” the Chapel Hill police department said in a statement Wednesday morning. “Hicks is cooperating with investigators and more information may be released at a later time.”
Robert Maitland, the attorney for Hicks' wife, said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon that the shooting was not fueled by hate and instead solely had to do with the issue of parking between the neighbors.
"It has nothing to do with the religious faith of the victims, it has nothing to do with terrorism, it has nothing to do with anything but the mundane issue of this man being frustrated day in and day out with not being able to park where he wanted to park, and unfortunately, these victims were there at the wrong time in the wrong place," Maitland said.
But for many, the answer of a parking dispute leaves troubling questions.
"A lot of people are not satisfied with that answer. Nobody shoots three innocent people execution style over a parking dispute, so we're still waiting for the facts to come out," Ouederni said.
Maitland said the shooting should serve to highlight the "importance of access to mental health care," though he could not say whether or not Hicks had ever been treated for any sort of mental illness.
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