Family members, friends and members of the Islamic community are asking authorities to investigate the Tuesday night killing of three Muslim students as a hate crime.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, shot his neighbors, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and Yusor’s sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, in Chapel Hill on Tuesday night. Hicks is being held at the Durham County Jail without bail on three counts of first-degree murder.
Deah graduated from NC State in 2013 and was a second-year student attending UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry. Yusor graduated from NC State in December 2014 with plans to join her husband at dental dental school in August. Razan had just begun her second semester at NC State studying environmental architecture.
At a press conference held by the Barakat family Wednesday afternoon, Suzanne Barakat, Deah’s older sister, asked authorities to “investigate these senseless and heinous murders as a hate crime.”
In a press release, Chapel Hill police indicated that the triple homicide may have been motivated by an ongoing parking dispute between the neighbors, but investigators will look into the possibility of it being a hate crime.
Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, Yusor and Razan’s father, told The News & Observer that he disagrees with the notion that an argument about parking motivated the killings.
“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” said Abu-Salha in an interview with The News & Observer. “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.”
Deah’s father, Namee Barakat, expressed similar sentiments.
“It’s unbelievable, the thing about parking,” Barakat said. “Even if it was about parking, to have him come in here and shoot three different innocent people in the head, I don’t know what kind of person that is. I don’t know if it’s about parking, this is, as we all know it is about more than that, unfortunately.”
Congress defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.”
A hate crime is not a distinctly federal offense, according to the FBI, but the federal government can investigate and prosecute crimes of bias as civil rights violations. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 increased penalties for hate crime offenses.
Hate crimes against Muslims are five times more common now than they were before the 9/11 attacks, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports program. Prior to 9/11, about 20-30 anti-Muslim hate crimes took place each year. In 2001, that number skyrocketed to nearly 500. In the years following, about 100-150 anti-Muslim hate crimes have been recorded annually.
“A culture of impunity toward hate crimes against Muslims may develop in the wake of extremist attacks,” said Anna Bigelow, an associate professor of Islamic studies in the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at NC State. “Historically, such events have been followed by an increase in hate crimes against Muslims and people perceived as Muslim. This puts fault on the entire culture when that fault should be put on individuals who commit crimes.”
Fatima Hedadji, outreach coordinator for NC State’s Muslim Students’ Association, said the media has been unfair in reporting about crimes against Muslims.
“This is an issue we’ve allowed to just be silent,” said Hedadji, a junior studying communication. “[The media] step away from the individual who did it and instead blamed things like mental illness or a parking conflict instead of what it really was. And if this was reversed, there is so much proof in the world to say that if this was three non-Muslims and one Muslim who killed them, this would be another attack on Islam and Muslim, and it would be another declaration on terrorism.”
According to The Daily Tar Heel, during a press conference held outside the Maitland Law Firm office in Chapel Hill, Craig Hicks’ wife, Karen, said she did not believe the crime was religiously motivated.
“While I am unable to comment fully on the matter, I can say it is my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith, but was in fact related to the long-standing parking dispute my husband had with the neighbors,” Karen Hicks said. “Our neighbors are various religions, races and creeds.”
Others are also hesitant to label the homicides as a hate crime until further investigation.
“At this point, investigation is ongoing, and I hope anybody and everybody will trust the system and refrain from any statement or action to jump into any kind of conclusion,” said Imam Abdullah Antepli, chief representative of Muslim affairs at Duke University.
“This may or may not be a hate crime, personally speaking, because there is evidence in either direction at this point, but saying either this way or that way will be only unhelpful and will increase the tension that already exists,” Antepli said.
Regardless of the motivations for the killings, Namee Barakat called for the death penalty at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“Basically right now, the biggest thing is asking for justice. If justice is served, that’s really all what we’re asking for, and we will wait and see,” Namee said. When asked what will achieve justice, he said, “Obviously three people got killed, got shot in the head, I mean the death penalty will do that.”
