A suspect who shot three Palestinian American college students during the Thanksgiving holiday was caught by police.
Local police are continuing their investigation, weighing the possibility of a hate crime.
According to a report by the New York Times on the 27th, police in Burlington, Vermont, arrested Jason Eaton (48) on charges of shooting and injuring three young men of Palestinian origin and are investigating.
Referring to a police statement, Eaton is accused of shooting three Palestinian college students with a pistol in front of his apartment near the University of Vermont in Burlington at around 6:25 p.m. on the 25th.
Local police said that two of the young victims are currently in stable condition, but the other is seriously injured. According to the victims’ families, the three students, all college students in their early 20s, were attacked while on their way to the grandmother’s house of one of the victims for the Thanksgiving holiday.
The suspect approached the people walking by talking in a mix of English and Arabic and fired four shots without saying a word.
Vermont, located in the northeastern United States, borders Quebec, Canada, and is known to have a relatively low crime rate in the United States. More than 90% of the resident population is made up of white people, and the suspect, Eaton, is also white.
All three victims were from Palestine, two of them were U.S. citizens and the other was a legal resident, police said. It was discovered that two of the victims were wearing kaffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian dress with a black and white check pattern, at the time of the attack.
Local police are considering the possibility that this incident was a hate crime and have requested cooperation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).The American Arab Non-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a Muslim human rights group in the United States, released a statement the day before and said that the three victims were Hisham Awathani, a student at Brown University, Kinnan Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford University, and Tahsin Ahmed, a student at Trinity University.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also said in a statement the day before, President Joe Biden also issued a statement, saying, “I was shocked to hear that three Palestinian college students were shot,” adding, “They were just spending Thanksgiving with their families and loved ones.”
He continued, “There is no place for violence or hate in America. No one should have to worry about being shot while going about their daily lives. We will never accept that.”