Suspect arrested in shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont

A suspect was arrested Sunday in the shooting of three Palestinian students in Burlington, Vermont the night before, police said, adding that contrary to media reports the shooter did not speak before firing.

Jason J Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday afternoon near where the men, all 20 years old, were shot, the Burlington Police Department announced. They said he lives in an apartment close to the scene, a search of which revealed evidence that gave investigators “probable cause to believe that Mr Eaton perpetrated the shooting”, police said.

Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid.

Photograph: Handout/Institute for Middle East Unders/AFP/ The victims – Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, all 20 years old – are undergraduate students at Brown University, Haverford College and Trinity College respectively, and were on their way to Awartani’s grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner when a white man with a handgun fired on them.

Two of the men are reportedly in stable condition, according to police, but the third received “much more serious injuries” after being hit in the spinal cord. Two were reportedly wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh when they were attacked.

The chief of police, Jon Murad, recommended caution when it came to identifying a motive in the attacks. “The fact is that we don’t yet know as much as we want to right now,” Murad said. “But I urge the public to avoid making conclusions based on statements from uninvolved parties who know even less.”

The mayor of the city, Miro Weinberger, said before the arrest that the investigation was focusing on whether the attack was a hate crime, while the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said on X: “We have reason to believe that the shooting was motivated by the three [victims] being Arab.”

According to a spokesperson for the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), the committee’s attorney Abed Ayoub, who is in contact with the families, told the IMEU that the fact the shooter didn’t say anything first “makes it even clearer that authorities should be investigating this attack as a hate crime”.

“The fact that the shooter said nothing, and apparently targeted the students based on their kuffiyehs, suggests that this was a violent act motivated by anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian sentiment,” Ayoub said.

Police said two of the men are American citizens and the third is a legal resident.

Bernie Sanders, the senator of Vermont, issued a statement calling news of the shooting, “shocking and deeply upsetting”, adding: “Hate has no place here, or anywhere. I look forward to a full investigation.”

The families of the three victims put out a joint statement calling on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation, “including treating this as a hate crime”.

The Ramallah Friends School issued a statement on Facebook naming the victims and describing them as graduates of the Palestinian high school.

The White House said Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation and will continue to monitor the investigation.

Burlington police described the case as three incidents of aggravated assault. He is expected to be arraigned in court on Monday.

The allegations about the shooting’s circumstances come amid a reported rise of Islamophobia and antisemitism in the US after the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October.