 |
FACEBOOK
The three students at UNC-Chapel Hill were shot dead in 2015. |
ASAM NEWS
A judge sentenced Craig Stephen Hicks Wednesday to life in prison without parole for murdering three Muslim Americans.
Hicks was sentenced for murdering 23-year-old Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, in their Chapel Hill, N.C. condo in 2015.
Chapel Hill police said Hicks exploded following a parking dispute at his apartment complex, but the victims’ families and supporters across the globe say that Hicks targeted them because they were Muslim, and have called on federal authorities to pursue hate crime charges, The New York Times reported.
After Hicks pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, Judge Orlando Hudson asked the news media to turn off recorders and cameras. In a courtroom packed with the victims’ friends and family, many in Muslim dress, the prosecutors played previously unseen video footage from the night of the murders.
The New York Times reported that Hicks knocked on the victims' door, interrupting their dinner. “You’ve got three cars in the lot, and I don’t have a parking spot,” Hicks says in the video. According to police reports, none of the three students had parked in Hicks’ assigned parking spot, and only two had parked anywhere in the lot.
Barakat remains polite in the video and does not curse, but Hicks says, “If you’re going to be disrespectful towards me, I am going to be disrespectful of you.”
NPR News reported that the video was taken on Barakat’s cell phone. “Hicks can be seen first threatening Deah, then almost immediately start shooting. The cell phone falls with the camera facing the ceiling.”
Then, “the sounds of women screaming can be heard,” Fox News reported, “followed by several more shots. Then silence.”
At the hearing, the state said that investigators interviewed 36 neighbors, and none of the White neighbors remembered him carrying any weapons, but people of color did. He showed off a handgun on his hip when he wanted to intimidate his Korean neighbor, reported Fox News.
After Hicks pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, Judge Orlando Hudson asked the news media to turn off recorders and cameras. In a courtroom packed with the victims’ friends and family, many in Muslim dress, the prosecutors played previously unseen video footage from the night of the murders.
The New York Times reported that Hicks knocked on the victims' door, interrupting their dinner. “You’ve got three cars in the lot, and I don’t have a parking spot,” Hicks says in the video. According to police reports, none of the three students had parked in Hicks’ assigned parking spot, and only two had parked anywhere in the lot.
Barakat remains polite in the video and does not curse, but Hicks says, “If you’re going to be disrespectful towards me, I am going to be disrespectful of you.”
NPR News reported that the video was taken on Barakat’s cell phone. “Hicks can be seen first threatening Deah, then almost immediately start shooting. The cell phone falls with the camera facing the ceiling.”
Then, “the sounds of women screaming can be heard,” Fox News reported, “followed by several more shots. Then silence.”
At the hearing, the state said that investigators interviewed 36 neighbors, and none of the White neighbors remembered him carrying any weapons, but people of color did. He showed off a handgun on his hip when he wanted to intimidate his Korean neighbor, reported Fox News.
He also blocked the car of a woman of Indian descent and threatened to beat her, he told a Persian man, “I am sick of you people,” and used racial slurs against Black neighbors, reported The New York Times. And he confronted Abu-Salha and her mother in late 2014, NPR News reported, and said, “I don’t like the look of you people. Get out of here.” Both of the women were wearing hijabs.
“This was not a dispute over a parking space,” Mohammed Abu-Salha, father of the two slain women, told the Charlotte Observer. “This was a hate crime.”
North Carolina does not have a hate crime statute that would apply to first-degree murder, so family members have met with federal authorities repeatedly to pursue hate-crime charges, but to no avail.
Former US Attorney Ripley Rand said Wednesday that he hadn’t decided to pursue hate-crime charges against Hicks when he resigned before the incoming Trump administration in 2017. There was “no additional punishment he could have gotten that would have meant anything,” Rand said.
But the families of the victims disagree. “It hurt a lot of feelings and it added to the false narrative,” Joe Cheshire, an attorney for the families said. “Our government failed this family and our multicultural democracy.”
Barakat was a student at UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry. His wife of less than 2 months, Yusor Abu-Salha, was just accepted to the dental school. Her younger sister Razan Abu-Salha was an undergraduate and made the dean’s list at North Carolina State University, reported Fox News. The three often cooked food for a homeless shelter, worked to improve a Raleigh neighborhood, and were planning a trip to Turkey to provide aide to Syrian refugees.
“These were students who wanted nothing more than to change the world,” said UNC Chancellor Carol Folt, “who basically thought the most important thing in life was helping people that were less fortunate than they were.”
“This was not a dispute over a parking space,” Mohammed Abu-Salha, father of the two slain women, told the Charlotte Observer. “This was a hate crime.”
North Carolina does not have a hate crime statute that would apply to first-degree murder, so family members have met with federal authorities repeatedly to pursue hate-crime charges, but to no avail.
Former US Attorney Ripley Rand said Wednesday that he hadn’t decided to pursue hate-crime charges against Hicks when he resigned before the incoming Trump administration in 2017. There was “no additional punishment he could have gotten that would have meant anything,” Rand said.
But the families of the victims disagree. “It hurt a lot of feelings and it added to the false narrative,” Joe Cheshire, an attorney for the families said. “Our government failed this family and our multicultural democracy.”
Barakat was a student at UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry. His wife of less than 2 months, Yusor Abu-Salha, was just accepted to the dental school. Her younger sister Razan Abu-Salha was an undergraduate and made the dean’s list at North Carolina State University, reported Fox News. The three often cooked food for a homeless shelter, worked to improve a Raleigh neighborhood, and were planning a trip to Turkey to provide aide to Syrian refugees.
“These were students who wanted nothing more than to change the world,” said UNC Chancellor Carol Folt, “who basically thought the most important thing in life was helping people that were less fortunate than they were.”
__________________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment