CHAPEL KILLINGS

Three Tragic Deaths Surrounded By Something We Cannot Prove

More stories from JOSHUA RUMMAGE

2E1D781E-E32C-409B-A15B-AFCB7A317773_cx0_cy3_cw0_mw1024_s_n_r1Ron Layters

On a cold February morning, three university students of Palestinian heritage were shot and killed in their own home. This crime was not committed in Israel or even in the middle east at all, it was committed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were killed in their home in Finley Forest Condominiums on February 10, 2015. The three individuals were allegedly shot by their next door neighbor Craig Stephen Hicks.

Barakat was in his second year of schooling at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry. His wife Yusor was a graduate from North Carolina State University hoping to attend University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry in the fall. Yusor’s sister Razan was a student at North Carolina State University majoring in architecture.

The motive behind Hicks’ crime was at first unknown. However the Chapel Hill Police Department discovered that there was an ongoing dispute over parking between Hicks and Barakat.

Hicks was later indicted by a grand jury in Durham County on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling. Currently the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)  have opened their own investigations into the shooting.

Despite the fact that Chapel Hill Police found that the motive was over a parking dispute, many still believed that this was a hate crime. This is the reason that the FBI and DOJ have opened their own investigations.

A hate crime is defined as a crime that has an added element of bias against a person’s race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. Currently both organizations are trying to find any indication that this murder was a hate crime since all three victims were of Palestinian heritage.

Yet the FBI is very careful to say that hate itself is not a crime. Hatred is a right that is given to all United States Citizens under the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. Therefore it is very difficult to prove a hate crime without a confession.