Three Muslims killed in shooting near UNC; police, family argue over motive​ - Washingtonpost

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A sudden, shocking spasm of violence near campus of the University of North Carolina here was followed quickly by alarm and debate about why three Muslims were allegedly gunned down by a neighbor and what role, if any, religion may have played.

The three victims were identified by police and school officials in the early hours of Wednesday morning. They were all young adults with ties to universities in the region, two of whom had gotten married just six weeks earlier: Deah Barakat, 23, was a second-year student at the University of North Carolina’s School of Dentistry; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, was set to enroll there in the fall. The third victim was her 19-year-old sister, Razan, a student at nearby North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

“They were angels, just wonderful, beautiful people,” Ayoub Ouederni, vice president of the UNC Muslim Student Association, said Wednesday. “They were all-American kids, just ordinary kids.”

The shooting deaths of three Muslims prompted concerns that the violence was motivated by their religion, and leading Muslim civil rights advocates called for police to address that possible explanation. But the Chapel Hill Police Department said it appeared, at least initially, that the shooting centered on a parking argument, while also promising to see if religion was a factor in the killings.

Family members of the victims disputed the idea that it was simply an argument involving parking. The father of two of the victims said Wednesday that one of his daughters had previously told her family about Hicks having a problem with the way she looked.

“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Mohammad Abu-Salha, a psychiatrist in nearby Clayton, N.C., told the News and Observer in Raleigh. “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.”

Barakat’s sister on Wednesday asked that authorities investigate the three “senseless and heinous murders” as a hate crime.

The young couple killed in the shooting were married in late December, a little more than six weeks ago, she had posted on Facebook. On Monday, she changed her profile picture to show her dancing with her father at the wedding.  Read More

Three Muslims killed in shooting near UNC; police, family argue over motive​