Authorities plan to investigate whether the man who allegedly shot three Muslim students to death near the University of North Carolina was motivated by religious hate, Durham County District Attorney Roger Echols said Wednesday.
Echols told the Los Angeles Times that officials will look into whether the victims’ faith played a role in the shooting and then decide whether to seek hate crimes charges.
Chapel Hill police on Tuesday arrested and charged Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, with three counts of first-degree murder. The victims were identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry, and sisters Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, both students at North Carolina State University.
Police suggested that Hicks may have been motivated by a long-running parking dispute but did not speculate further as to why he allegedly shot the three students.
A Facebook page that appears to belong to Hicks showed that the suspected shooter had a strong bias against all religions as a self-professed “anti-theist,” as well as a love of guns.
Translation: “We need time to train this guy during ‘interrogation’ not to say things that will highlight he’s a RWNJ whackadoo gun-nut Christianist who only resorted to this to ‘resolve’ any underlying disputes because they were brown people and Muslims. We’ll let you know as soon as we come up with our excuse for him not being charged with a hate crime.”
I am waiting for the right wing echo chamber to demand that Obama label this a terrorist act.
. I think what will be first will be Foxers screaming that murders of Christians aren’t labeled hate crimes.
That’s real nice of them especially since the BBC was reporting that the police were already claiming this was over parking not hate.
Honestly, I think better of the Chapel Hill P.D. than that. Not saying they’re the most liberal, easy-going people you could ever meet, but they’re probably the most liberal, comparatively easy-going, cops you’ll ever see.