A 48-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder over the shooting of three men of Palestinian descent in Vermont.
Jason J Eaton, who appeared in court in Burlington, was arrested near the site of the shooting on Sunday.
Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ahmed and Kinnan Abdalhamid were attacked near the University of Vermont on Saturday.
The men were speaking Arabic and two were wearing keffiyeh – a traditional scarf – when they were shot.
The three men, who are all aged 20, were visiting the home of one of their relatives over the Thanksgiving holiday when a white man confronted them with a gun outside the property, police said.
He allegedly fired at least four rounds at them without speaking and then fled.
Two of the victims were shot in the torso while the third was hit in his lower extremities, police said. Two are in a stable condition while the third sustained more serious injuries.
The attack comes as the US deals with a surge in Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents, including violent assaults and online harassment, since the Israel-Hamas conflict began on 7 October.
The FBI has warned of potential attacks by “homegrown violent extremists” since the war began.
Police have not given a potential motive in the shooting.
Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad urged the public to avoid jumping to conclusions “based on statements from uninvolved parties who know even less” than investigators.
“In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,” he said. “I have already been in touch with federal investigatory and prosecutorial partners to prepare for that if it’s proven.”
At a hearing on Monday, the suspect was ordered to be held without bail until a second hearing takes place in the next few days.
Mr Eaton lived in an apartment building opposite the location of the shooting on Prospect Street, according to police. He was reportedly arrested as federal agents were canvassing near the scene on Sunday.
They searched his home shortly after. “Evidence collected during that search warrant, and additional evidence developed during the course of this investigation, gave investigators and prosecutors probable cause to believe that Mr Eaton perpetrated the shooting,” police said.
Mr Eaton’s mother, Mary Reed, told The Daily Beast her son had struggled with mental health and job security but had been “in such a good mood” when they met for Thanksgiving on Thursday.
“Jason has had a lot of struggles in his life,” she said. “I am just shocked by the whole thing.”
Two of the victims are US citizens and one is a legal resident, police said.
Mr Abdalhamid, was named by Haverford College in Pennsylvania as one of its students. Mr Awartani attends Brown University in Rhode Island and Mr Ahmed is a student at Trinity College in Connecticut.
They attended Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker-run private non-profit school in Ramallah, together and were visiting Mr Awartani’s grandmother for Thanksgiving, according to family members.
“These are very bright students, they are close friends from first grade,” the school’s head, Rania Maayeh, told CNN.
She added that Mr Awartani was hit in the spine and “we are praying that he can walk”.
Rich Price, an uncle of one of the victims, said the three men had been visiting an eight-year-old’s birthday party. “The last thing that we imagine could be possible was that in our family neighbourhood, they would walk down the street and this would happen to them,” he said.
“Less than five minutes [after] them leaving our home, we saw the sirens and the flashing lights of police cruisers go by our house. And we thought, boy, something’s going on.
He had “no idea that it was my nephew and his friends.”
Earlier, the families of the victims released a statement through the pro-Palestinian non-profit organisation Institute for Middle East Understanding.
They called on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation and to treat the attack as a hate crime.
After the shooting, the Council on American-Islamic relations offered a $10,000 (£7,900) reward for information leading to an arrest.
Ambassador Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, posted a photo of the three victims on social media and added: “The hate crimes against Palestinians must stop.”
Source : BBC
