A district judge ruled Monday that prosecutors will be allowed seek the death penalty in their case against Craig Stephen Hicks, the man charged with killing three students in their Chapel Hill apartment over what investigators are calling a parking dispute.
Police charged Hicks, 46, with three counts of first-degree murder after he turned himself in to police for shooting and killing one NC State student and two alumni on Feb. 10. The shooting has since sparked global debate about whether the three Muslim students were killed over an ongoing parking dispute or out of hatred of the students’ religion.
The victims were Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, a first-year environmental architecture student at NC State; her sister Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, a December 2014 graduate; and Yusor’s husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, who was a May 2013 NC State graduate and second-year student at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry.
In a pretrial hearing Monday, which North Carolina requires of all capital punishment cases in North Carolina, Jim Dornfried, a Durham County assistant district attorney, declared that the prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Hicks and offered Judge Orlando Hudson several reasons why the prosecution feels it is justified, according to The News & Observer.
Dornfried argued capital punishment is justified because Hicks committed the homicides in the act of another felony. The nature of the shootings also played a role in the prosecution’s decision, Dornfried said.
On the day of the shooting, Dornfried said Hicks retrieved a gun from his home, went to the Barakat’s door, pulled out his concealed firearm and shot him, The N&O reported.
According to Dornfried, a spray of gunfire followed the encounter. Hicks shot the two women, who were still alive in or near the kitchen, again in the head before firing at Barakat again while leaving the condominium.
DNA evidence showed that Yusor Abu-Salha’s blood was on the pants Hicks was wearing when he turned himself in, Dornfried said. Investigators found eight spent shell casings inside the condominium.
On Monday, Durham District Attorney Roger Echols said the FBI is investigating the case. However, he declined to say if Hicks would face ethnic intimidation charges in addition to the three counts of first-degree murder, according to The N&O.
