Three Palestinian students injured after Vermont shooting

Police in Vermont are investigating the possibility of a “hate-motivated” crime in the Saturday evening shooting of three Palestinian college students in downtown Burlington, Vt.

Burlington police said on Sunday thata “white male with a handgun” approached the three students as they walked through downtown and “without speaking” shot the three men at least four times before fleeing on foot.

“All three victims were struck, two in their torsos and one in the lower extremities,” the Burlington Police Department said in a statement. All three remain hospitalized, one with very serious injuries, the department added.

The victims’ parents identified them in a statement as Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed. The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, a civil rights advocacy group, said it believed the students were targeted because they are Palestinians.

“As parents, we are devastated by the horrific news that our children were targeted and shot in Burlington, ” the parents said in a statement. “We call on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation, including treating this as a hate crime. ... No family should ever have to endure this pain and agony. Our children are dedicated students who deserve to be able to focus on their studies and building their futures.”

The ADC said the three men are students at Brown University, Haverford College, and Trinity College, respectively, and had gathered in Burlington to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Awartani’s grandmother.

The ADC also said that the students were wearing kaffiyehs, the traditional Arab scarf associated with Palestinians, when they were attacked.

“We have reason to believe that the shooting was motivated by the three victims being Arab,” the ADC statement said.

The Burlington police did not respond to a request to confirm the ADC’s description of the students’ dress and conversation at the time of the attack.

However, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said in a statement Sunday that police are investigating the possibility that the attack was “hate motivated” while cautioning against jumping to “conclusions based on statements from uninvolved parties who know even less” than police do amid the ongoing investigation.

“In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime. And I have already been in touch with federal investigatory and prosecutorial partners to prepare for that if it’s proven,” Murad said. His officers’ first priority is to identify, locate and apprehend the suspect, he added.

“We’re working every investigatory angle on this case, and will continue to provide reliable, factual information to public while protecting the victims and our investigation,” he said. “The fact is that we don’t yet know as much as we want to right now.”

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said in a statement that the possibility of a hate crime “is being prioritized in the BPD’s investigation.”

Federal authorities say they have been responding to a rise in threats against Arab, Jewish and Muslim communities as anger over the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has spilled into protests, street confrontations, and targeted attacks thousands of miles from the war zone.

On Oct. 14, an Illinois man fatally stabbed a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy and injured his mother in an apartment they were renting from him, authorities said. The Justice Department is investigating the killing as a hate crime.

Israel has mounted a massive assault on the densely populated Gaza Strip, killing more than 14,000 Palestinians — including thousands of children — since Oct. 7, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a brutal cross-border assault on Israel, killing some 1,200 people — including dozens of children — and taking around 240 people into Gaza as hostages.

The Biden administration and U.S. lawmakers from both parties have largely supported Israel in its war, and some lawmakers have echoed Israeli revenge rhetoric that has likened Palestinians to animals or cast doubt on whether Palestinian civilians are truly uninvolved civilians.

Basil Awartani, who identified himself on X, previously known as Twitter, as Awartani’s cousin, suggested Sunday that the shooting in Vermont was a consequence of “dangerous and dehumanizing rhetoric regurgitated by US politicians and right wing pundits.”

Abed Ayoub, the ADC’s national executive director, told The Washington Post Sunday night that his organization has been in touch with the students’ parents, some of whom were en route to Vermont. Awartani, the Brown University student whose grandmother lives in Burlington, was the most critically injured, Ayoub said.

“Hisham has a bullet lodged in his spine. We don’t know the total damage of that yet. We don’t know how severe, or what that will lead to,” Ayoub said. Another of the men had sustained damage to a lung, and the third, who had been less critically injured, was expected to be released from the hospital on Sunday, he added, declining to say which.

The Council on American Islamic Relations, the nation’s biggest Muslim advocacy group, issued a statement Sunday offering a $10,000 reward for information about the shooting in Vermont.

A Palestinian high school in the West Bank, Ramallah Friends, said all three of the men had attended school there before enrolling in U.S. universities. Police said that twoare U.S. citizens, and one is a legal U.S. resident.