RALEIGH, N.C. — Chapel Hill police said they are investigating whether religious or ethnic hatred motivated the killings of three Muslims, and federal investigators said hate crimes haven’t been ruled out.
The FBI also announced Thursday that it has “opened a parallel preliminary inquiry to determine whether any federal laws were violated.”
U.S. Attorney Ripley Rand, the district’s top federal prosecutor, had said Wednesday that there was no immediate evidence Muslims were being targeted.
Chapel Hill police said again Thursday they believe the deaths of the three resulted from a long-standing dispute over a parking at the apartment complex where the suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, and the three victims lived.
More than 5,000 mourners attended the funeral Thursday in Raleigh for the three who were shot to death Tuesday, a crowd so large that the services had to be moved from a mosque to a nearby athletic field.
The service for Deah Shaddy Barakat, a 23-year-old dental student; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21,and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh, began after midday Muslim prayers.
The caskets were carried on and off the field where the father of the two female victims spoke, saying he still believes what happened was a hate crime, but adding this should be a time of peace and not revenge.
“When we say this was a hate crime it is all about protecting all other children in the USA,” Dr. Mohammad Yousif Abu-Salha told the crowd. “It’s all about making this country that they loved, where they lived and died, peaceful for everybody else.
“We need to identify things the way they really are,” Abu-Salha continued. “If somebody picks up a fight about anything they can invent, and they murder three people execution-style, we know what this is about. And they have posted on their Facebook how much they hated faith, there’s no doubt.”
Hicks, 46, who lived in the same condominium complex as Barakat and his wife, has been charged with three counts of murder.
The victims, of Syrian descent, were all born in the USA and grew up in the North Carolina area.
Before the prayer service, relatives viewed the victims’ bodies in a small building apart from one of Raleigh’s largest mosques, where the families have long been members. The service then moved across the street to the fields owned by North Carolina State University, where two victims had graduated and one was a student.
Three coffins sat before a covered stage — in gray, white and silver. At the service’s end, about a dozen people carried each to hearses, which headed to an Islamic cemetery outside Raleigh.
The crowd was solemn and silent — only a few children crying in the distance could be heard. A large blue plastic prayer mat lay on the field, and some brought their own to use.
The killings shocked the quiet college town, with as many as 2,000 people turning out for the candlelight vigil in the heart of University of North Carolina campus Wednesday.
There was also moment of silence to honor the victims before Wednesday evening’s game between Virginia and N.C. State at PNC Arena. Students wore green ribbons in their honor.
A Second Amendment rights advocate with a concealed weapons permit, Hicks often complained about both Christians and Muslims on his Facebook page. “Some call me a gun toting Liberal, others call me an open-minded Conservative,” he wrote.
A woman who lives near the scene of the shootings described Hicks as short-tempered.
“Anytime that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry,” Samantha Maness said of Hicks. “He was very angry any time I saw him.”
Local authorities stressed that they are probing all aspects of the “senseless and tragic act,” said Chris Blue of the Chapel Hill Police Department.
“We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case,” he said. “Our thoughts are with the families and friends of these young people who lost their lives so needlessly.”
The killings prompted an outcry on Twitter — under the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter — over what many charged was anti-Muslim bias. The Council of American Islamic Relations also called on law enforcement authorities to find out if hate was a factor in the killings.
Hicks’ wife, Karen, flanked by attorneys Rob Maitland and Michelle English, met with reporters Wednesday and said the argument “had nothing to do with religion … but was in fact related to the long-standing parking disputes.”
She then issued another brief statement through her lawyer, saying she’s divorcing Hicks.
“It has nothing to do with terrorism. It has nothing to do with anything but the mundane issue of this man being frustrated day in and day out and not being able to park where he wanted to park,” Maitland added. “These victims were there at the wrong time and wrong place.”
Hicks’ ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, said that before they divorced about 17 years ago, his favorite movie was Falling Down, the 1993 Michael Douglas film about a divorced unemployed engineer who goes on a shooting rampage.
“That always freaked me out,” Hurley said. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all,” she said.
Family and friends of the victims remembered them as outgoing and optimistic young adults working to make the world a better place.
“This was like the power couple of our community,” said Ali Sajjad, 21, the president of the Muslim Student Association at N.C. State, WTVD-TV reported.
The couple met while helping to run the Muslim Student Association, before Barakat moved to Chapel Hill to study dentistry at UNC. Yusor Abu-Salha, who graduated in December, planned to enroll in the dental school in the fall. Razan Abu-Salha, still at N.C. State, was visiting from Raleigh when they were killed.
The newlyweds had planned to travel to Rihaniya, Turkey, this summer to provide free dental care for Syrian refugee schoolchildren. To offset the costs, Barakat posted a video on a fundraising website seeking $20,000 in donations. Contributions surged after their deaths, to more than $250,000 by Thursday.
Barakat’s family was from Syria, although he was born in the USA. Yusor Abu-Salha was born in Jordan and came to the U.S. with her family as a young girl. In an interview recorded last year as part of the StoryCorps project and broadcast by North Carolina Public Radio on Thursday, she expressed gratitude for her adopted homeland.
“Growing up in America has been such a blessing,” she said. “And, you know, although in some ways I do stand out, such as the hijab I wear on my head, the head covering, there’s still so many ways I feel so embedded in the fabric that is our culture. That’s the beautiful thing here, is that I doesn’t matter where you come from. There are so many people from so many different places, of different backgrounds and religions. But here we’re all one, one culture.”
Contributing: Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY, and The Associated Press
The FBI also announced Thursday that it has “opened a parallel preliminary inquiry to determine whether any federal laws were violated.”
U.S. Attorney Ripley Rand, the district’s top federal prosecutor, had said Wednesday that there was no immediate evidence Muslims were being targeted.
Chapel Hill police said again Thursday they believe the deaths of the three resulted from a long-standing dispute over a parking at the apartment complex where the suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, and the three victims lived.
More than 5,000 mourners attended the funeral Thursday in Raleigh for the three who were shot to death Tuesday, a crowd so large that the services had to be moved from a mosque to a nearby athletic field.
The service for Deah Shaddy Barakat, a 23-year-old dental student; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21,and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh, began after midday Muslim prayers.
The caskets were carried on and off the field where the father of the two female victims spoke, saying he still believes what happened was a hate crime, but adding this should be a time of peace and not revenge.
“When we say this was a hate crime it is all about protecting all other children in the USA,” Dr. Mohammad Yousif Abu-Salha told the crowd. “It’s all about making this country that they loved, where they lived and died, peaceful for everybody else.
Hicks, 46, who lived in the same condominium complex as Barakat and his wife, has been charged with three counts of murder.
The victims, of Syrian descent, were all born in the USA and grew up in the North Carolina area.
Three coffins sat before a covered stage — in gray, white and silver. At the service’s end, about a dozen people carried each to hearses, which headed to an Islamic cemetery outside Raleigh.
The crowd was solemn and silent — only a few children crying in the distance could be heard. A large blue plastic prayer mat lay on the field, and some brought their own to use.
The killings shocked the quiet college town, with as many as 2,000 people turning out for the candlelight vigil in the heart of University of North Carolina campus Wednesday.
There was also moment of silence to honor the victims before Wednesday evening’s game between Virginia and N.C. State at PNC Arena. Students wore green ribbons in their honor.
A Second Amendment rights advocate with a concealed weapons permit, Hicks often complained about both Christians and Muslims on his Facebook page. “Some call me a gun toting Liberal, others call me an open-minded Conservative,” he wrote.
A woman who lives near the scene of the shootings described Hicks as short-tempered.
“Anytime that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry,” Samantha Maness said of Hicks. “He was very angry any time I saw him.”
Local authorities stressed that they are probing all aspects of the “senseless and tragic act,” said Chris Blue of the Chapel Hill Police Department.
“We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case,” he said. “Our thoughts are with the families and friends of these young people who lost their lives so needlessly.”
The killings prompted an outcry on Twitter — under the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter — over what many charged was anti-Muslim bias. The Council of American Islamic Relations also called on law enforcement authorities to find out if hate was a factor in the killings.
Hicks’ wife, Karen, flanked by attorneys Rob Maitland and Michelle English, met with reporters Wednesday and said the argument “had nothing to do with religion … but was in fact related to the long-standing parking disputes.”
She then issued another brief statement through her lawyer, saying she’s divorcing Hicks.
“It has nothing to do with terrorism. It has nothing to do with anything but the mundane issue of this man being frustrated day in and day out and not being able to park where he wanted to park,” Maitland added. “These victims were there at the wrong time and wrong place.”
Hicks’ ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, said that before they divorced about 17 years ago, his favorite movie was Falling Down, the 1993 Michael Douglas film about a divorced unemployed engineer who goes on a shooting rampage.
“That always freaked me out,” Hurley said. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all,” she said.
Family and friends of the victims remembered them as outgoing and optimistic young adults working to make the world a better place.
“This was like the power couple of our community,” said Ali Sajjad, 21, the president of the Muslim Student Association at N.C. State, WTVD-TV reported.
The newlyweds had planned to travel to Rihaniya, Turkey, this summer to provide free dental care for Syrian refugee schoolchildren. To offset the costs, Barakat posted a video on a fundraising website seeking $20,000 in donations. Contributions surged after their deaths, to more than $250,000 by Thursday.
Barakat’s family was from Syria, although he was born in the USA. Yusor Abu-Salha was born in Jordan and came to the U.S. with her family as a young girl. In an interview recorded last year as part of the StoryCorps project and broadcast by North Carolina Public Radio on Thursday, she expressed gratitude for her adopted homeland.
“Growing up in America has been such a blessing,” she said. “And, you know, although in some ways I do stand out, such as the hijab I wear on my head, the head covering, there’s still so many ways I feel so embedded in the fabric that is our culture. That’s the beautiful thing here, is that I doesn’t matter where you come from. There are so many people from so many different places, of different backgrounds and religions. But here we’re all one, one culture.”
Contributing: Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY, and The Associated Press
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