CHAPEL HILL, United States (AFP) — Police investigating the murders of three Muslim students in the United States said Wednesday they were studying whether the fatal shootings were religiously motivated, as calls mounted for the killings to be treated as a hate crime.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder after Tuesday’s slayings in the North Carolina university town of Chapel Hill which sparked outrage amongst Muslims worldwide.
Police emphasised that initial investigations indicated a dispute between Hicks and his victims over parking spaces may have been the catalyst for a shooting spree which claimed the lives of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.
However, police said they had not ruled out the possibility that hatred of Muslims had motivated Hicks.
“We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case,” Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said.
The cautious wording of the police statement contrasted sharply with the anguished reaction amongst many Muslims, with the father of two of the students demanding investigators treat the killing as a “hate crime”.
“This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime,” said Mohammad Abu-Salha, the psychiatrist father of the two women shot dead.
“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.”
Abu-Salha told the local News & Observer newspaper his daughter had voiced fears about Hicks last week.
“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,'” Abu-Salha was quoted as saying.
The sister of slain Deah Shaddy Barakat echoed the demands.
“We are still in a state of shock as we will never be able to make sense of this horrendous tragedy,” Suzanne Barakat said.
“We ask that the authorities investigate these senseless and horrendous murders as a hate crime.”