- Wed Feb 11, 2015 8:41 pm
#53787
Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were all found shot to death in a condo near the campus late Tuesday afternoon. Neighbor Craig Stephen Hicks, a vehement 46-year-old self-professed atheist, surrendered to police and has been charged in the triple homicide. Cops are investigating whether the murders were a hate crime.
The man accused of killing three young members of a young Muslim family in an apartment complex near the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill had hate in his heart and targeted the students because of their ethnicity, according to the devastated father of two of the victims.
Police say the triple murder of Deah Barakat, 23, his 21-year-old wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, Tuesday afternoon was the climax of a long-simmering parking dispute with 46-year-old neighbor Craig Stephen Hicks.
Hicks, an avowed and vehement atheist according to his Facebook posts, appeared shackled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit during arraignment Wednesday when a judge ordered him held without bond until a court appearance March 4.
“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” the father of the women, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, told the Charlotte News and Observer Wednesday morning. “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.”
Yusor told her father just last week that the couple lived next door to “a hateful neighbor” who disparaged her Muslim headscarf and religious beliefs, the dad said.
“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” he told the newspaper.
Hicks' wife, Karen Hicks, argued that the shooting was motivated by the parking spat and had nothing to do with the victims' faith.
The accused killer used his Facebook page to promote his atheistic views and demean those who embrace religion.
“I give your religion as much respect as your religion gives me,” he wrote in a long rant under the Religion section of his page, where he identifies as atheist. “There’s nothing complicated about it, and I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being — which your religion does with self-righteous gusto. When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I. But given that it doesn’t, and given the enormous harm that your religion has done in this world, I’d say that I have not only a right, but a duty, to insult it, as does every rational, thinking person on this planet. Because the moment that your religion claims any kind of jurisdiction over my experience, you insult me on a level that you can’t even begin to comprehend. Even if your beliefs had substance, the arrogance of that would be insult enough. But the fact that they have no substance, and are merely a transparent raft of delusions and lies, magnifies the insult enormously.”
Another photo, posted Jan. 20, is of a holstered .38-caliber revolver on a scale with the caption, “Yes, that is 1 pound 5.1 ounces for my loaded 38 revolver, its holster, and five extra rounds in a speedloader.”
The man accused of killing three young members of a young Muslim family in an apartment complex near the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill had hate in his heart and targeted the students because of their ethnicity, according to the devastated father of two of the victims.
Police say the triple murder of Deah Barakat, 23, his 21-year-old wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, Tuesday afternoon was the climax of a long-simmering parking dispute with 46-year-old neighbor Craig Stephen Hicks.
Hicks, an avowed and vehement atheist according to his Facebook posts, appeared shackled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit during arraignment Wednesday when a judge ordered him held without bond until a court appearance March 4.
“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” the father of the women, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, told the Charlotte News and Observer Wednesday morning. “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.”
Yusor told her father just last week that the couple lived next door to “a hateful neighbor” who disparaged her Muslim headscarf and religious beliefs, the dad said.
“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” he told the newspaper.
Hicks' wife, Karen Hicks, argued that the shooting was motivated by the parking spat and had nothing to do with the victims' faith.
The accused killer used his Facebook page to promote his atheistic views and demean those who embrace religion.
“I give your religion as much respect as your religion gives me,” he wrote in a long rant under the Religion section of his page, where he identifies as atheist. “There’s nothing complicated about it, and I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being — which your religion does with self-righteous gusto. When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I. But given that it doesn’t, and given the enormous harm that your religion has done in this world, I’d say that I have not only a right, but a duty, to insult it, as does every rational, thinking person on this planet. Because the moment that your religion claims any kind of jurisdiction over my experience, you insult me on a level that you can’t even begin to comprehend. Even if your beliefs had substance, the arrogance of that would be insult enough. But the fact that they have no substance, and are merely a transparent raft of delusions and lies, magnifies the insult enormously.”
Another photo, posted Jan. 20, is of a holstered .38-caliber revolver on a scale with the caption, “Yes, that is 1 pound 5.1 ounces for my loaded 38 revolver, its holster, and five extra rounds in a speedloader.”
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