A man has been arrested in the shooting of three 20-year-old Palestinian-American students in Vermont, police said.
Jason J. Eaton, 48, was identified by police as a suspect in the attack near the University of Vermont on Saturday evening, according to a news release from the Burlington Police Department.
He was detained at around midday on Sunday near where the shooting occurred. Police searched his home in the apartment building in front of where the shooting took place and arrested him on Sunday evening.
Eaton faces three counts of aggravated assault, police said. He is expected to be arraigned on Monday. Newsweek has contacted the Burlington Police Department for further comment via email.
Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad were identified by their families as the victims, according to a post on X, formerly Twitter, from the Institute for Middle East Understanding. Awartani is a student at Brown University, Abdalhamid is a student at Haverford College and Ahmed is a student at Trinity College.
"We are extremely concerned about the safety and well-being of our children," the statement said. "We call on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation, including treating this as a hate crime. We will not be comfortable until the shooter is brought to justice."
The victims were in Burlington for a Thanksgiving holiday gathering, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said on Sunday.
They were walking during a visit to one of their relatives when they were confronted by a white man with a handgun, police said.
"Without speaking, he discharged at least four rounds from the pistol and is believed to have fled," Murad said. "All three victims were struck, two in their torsos and one in the lower extremities."
The victims are of Palestinian descent, two are U.S. citizens and one is a legal resident, Murad said. Two of them were wearing black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarves at the time of the attack, Murad said.
Murad on Sunday said there was no further information to suggest a motive, but investigators suspect it may have been a hate-motivated crime.
"The fact is that we don't yet know as much as we want to right now," he added. "But I urge the public to avoid making conclusions based on statements from uninvolved parties who know even less."
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee released a statement Sunday saying that the victims were Palestinian-American college students.
There is "reason to believe this shooting occurred because the victims are Arab," the committee's statement said. "According to the information provided the three victims were wearing a Kuffiyeh and speaking Arabic. A man shouted and harassed the victims, then proceeded to shoot them."
The FBI in Albany, New York, said the bureau is "actively investigating" the shooting with the Burlington Police Department, ATF and other federal, state and local agencies.
The shooting comes amid a rise in the number of Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents reported around the United States since the latest wave of Israel-Palestinian violence erupted on October 7.
Last month, an elderly Illinois man was charged with a hate crime after allegedly fatally stabbing a 6-year-old Muslim boy and seriously wounding his mother in Chicago. Police and relatives said he singled out the victims because of their faith.
Israel has carried out weeks of airstrikes across Gaza and launched a ground operation aimed at destroying Hamas' military capabilities after Hamas' bloody rampage into Israel on October 7.
A four-day truce that has given some respite to Gaza's 2.3 million residents is currently set to expire after Monday, as Israel and Hamas prepare for a fourth exchange of hostages taken during the October 7 attack for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed in the seven weeks since the war began, The Associated Press reports, citing the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 1,200 people have been killed on the Israeli side, most of them in the initial October 7 attack, the AP reports.
Update 11/27/23, 3:50 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
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