Authorities said they were looking for a shooter who shot and wounded three college students of Palestinian heritage in Burlington, Vermont, in what they believe was a hate-motivated assault.
According to Burlington police, a guy with a handgun shot the three victims on a street near the University of Vermont on Saturday evening and then fled.
According to authorities, two of the victims are US citizens, while the third is a lawful US resident. They are all 20 years old. According to police, two of the males were wearing keffiyehs, the characteristic black-and-white checkered scarf of Middle Eastern attire, at the time of the incident.
According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding, a nonprofit pro-Palestinian advocacy organisation, the victims were speaking Arabic when they were attacked, and the perpetrator opened fire on the three men after yelling and harassing them. According to police, he fired four bullets without saying anything.
Since the latest wave of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed erupted in the Middle East on 7 October, there has been an increase in anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic incidents reported across the United States.
“In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said in a statement.
“I have already been in touch with federal investigatory and prosecutorial partners to prepare for that if it’s proven,” Murad added, saying the criminal probe was focused for now on apprehending the suspect.
“That there is an indication that this shooting could have been motivated by hate is chilling, and this possibility is being prioritized” by police, Mayor Miro Weinberger said.
The victims’ families issued a joint statement earlier in the day urging authorities to investigate the shooting as a hate crime, as did the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a US-based advocacy group.
“The surge in anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian sentiment we are experiencing is unprecedented, and this is another example of that hate turning violent,” ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub said.
The families identified the victims as Hisham Awartani, a student at Brown University in Rhode Island; Kinnan Abdel Hamid, a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania; and Tahseen Ahmed, who attends Trinity College in Connecticut. All three are graduates of the Ramallah Friends School, a private Quaker secondary school in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the families said.
Two of the students were visiting the home of the third student’s family in Burlington for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Police said all three remained under medical care on Sunday, two with gunshot wounds in their torsos and one shot in the lower extremities. “Two are stable, while one has sustained much more serious injuries,” police said.
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