Hate-motivated crimes on rise in US; 3 Palestinian students shot in Vermont

Three Palestinian college students were shot in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday evening, in connection with the rising hate-motivated crimes in the US following the Israel-Hamas war.

As reported, three young men of Palestinian descent were attending a Thanksgiving holiday gathering near the University of Vermont campus Saturday evening.

• Hisham Awartani is a junior at Brown University who, according to Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, is being treated at a hospital and is expected to survive.
• Kinnan Abdalhamid is a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Administrators said he was recovering from a gunshot wound in the hospital.
• Tahseen Ahmed is a student at Connecticut’s Trinity College, which said he was in a stable condition in a hospital.

Two of the men were in stable condition and the other suffered “much more serious injuries,” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said in a statement Sunday.

“The three, all age 20, were walking during a visit to the home of one of the victim’s relatives when they were confronted by a white man with a handgun,” the police said.

“Without speaking, he discharged at least four rounds from the pistol and is believed to have fled,” Murad said, adding, “All three victims were struck, two in their torsos and one in the lower extremities.”

The victims are all of Palestinian descent. Two are U.S. citizens and the third is in the country with legal permission. Two of the men were wearing the black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, Murad said.

In the latest development, Vermont Police arrested a suspect in the shooting of three young men on Sunday.

Jason J. Eaton, 48, was arrested by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives while conducting a search of the shooting area in Burlington at 3:38 p.m. Sunday, the Burlington Police Department said in a statement.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a statement released on Sunday said that the victims were Palestinian American college students and that there is “reason to believe this shooting occurred because the victims are Arab.”

“A man shouted and harassed the victims, who were conversing in Arabic, then proceeded to shoot them, the committee’s statement added.

X-Platform’s timeline is flooded with messages reacting to this latest hate crime in the US directed towards Muslims.