GUILTY NC - Deah Barakat, 23, his wife & her sister murdered, Chapel Hill, 10 Feb 2015

[Boodles]

omg, he was taking pix of parking transgressions and logging activity on his computer. What a wacko. This is from this morning's raleigh newspaper.

And regarding his marriage, his wife was pursuing divorce at the time of the murders (not because of them).

CHAPEL HILL — The man accused of killing three Muslim students in Chapel Hill last month kept pictures and detailed notes on parking activity in the condominium complex where the shootings occurred, according to a search warrant released Monday.
Craig Stephen Hicks kept the parking lot information in one of two desktop computers seized from his Finley Forest condominium, according to a Feb. 13 application for a warrant to search three cellphones...

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/03/02/4594714_durham-da-plans-to-seek-death.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

 

[Concerned Mama]

Food drive in honor of Chapel Hill students yields tens of thousands of meals

March 7, 2015

RALEIGH, N.C. — Weeks after Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were shot and killed in Chapel Hill, friends and family have vowed to focus on how the three young Muslims served, rather than how they died.

On Saturday, The Islamic Center of Raleigh hosted a collection effort to benefit the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

. . . .

Friends said the event was inspired by Barakat's last Facebook post that showed him and others feeding the homeless in Durham.

 

[Concerned Mama]

San Francisco Chronicle interview with Dr. Suzanne Barakat, the sister of Deah Barakat, who was one of the three murder victims on February 10.



S.F. doctor whose brother was slain decries anti-Muslim hostility
By Hamed Aleaziz Updated 10:12 am, Sunday, March 8, 2015

Dr. Suzanne Barakat was writing a prescription for one of her patients at San Francisco General Hospital when her phone lit up with text messages from friends sending condolences.

It was Feb. 10 and Barakat, 27, was in her first year of family medicine residency. She ignored the first text, thinking it was either a mistake or a reference to family members in war-torn Syria.

“I just put my head back to work,” she said. But then Barakat noticed that one of the texts mentioned her 23-year-old brother, Deah Barakat, a dental student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

<snip>

In an examination of the case, the New York Times detailed Hicks’ obsession with parking at the complex but noted that the victims had not been parked in Hicks’ spot on the day of the slaughter. In online posts, the Times reported, Hicks “appeared to have a deep dislike of all religion.”

Suzanne Barakat has strong feelings about the question. She said in a telephone interview from Raleigh, N.C., where her parents live, that she considers the police statement about the parking dispute as “dishonoring them and their families and completely trivializing what their murders were.”

 

[OkieGranny]

http://www.worldbulletin.net/world/156532/new-technologies-amplify-terror-threats

A fundraising campaign to provide dental care for Syrian refugee students launched by one of three Muslim students slain last month in the state of North Carolina has raised more than half a million dollars.

As a dental student at University of North Carolina, Deah Barakat launched the "Refugee Smiles" project last summer to help Syrian refugee children in Turkey. Before his murder on Feb. 10, he managed to raise about $15,000... Only three days after being murdered... donations to Barakat's project jumped to $300,000, and on Wednesday contributions surpassed $510,000.

Barakat's family and the Syrian-American Medical Society, or SAMS, which was a contributor to the project, decided to convert the campaign into a foundation... "The remaining funds not spent on the Syrian Dental Relief mission will go to support the ‘Our Three Winners Trust’... The trust has been established by the victims’ families and will be used to fund education and community service projects in the years to come, according to the statement.

 

[fran]

Man charged with killing students may face death penalty

ALEIGH, N.C.-- A judge in North Carolina has ruled the man accused of killing three Muslim college students can face a death penalty trial.

Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson Jr. ruled Monday in a hearing where a prosecutor described some of the evidence against Craig Stephen Hicks.


read more ............http://www.11alive.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/04/07/craig-stephen-hicks-death-penalty/25398385/

 

[bluesneakers]

First Mosque In Chapel Hill Set To Open

In February 2015, three young Muslim students were gunned down at a Chapel Hill condominium. Police say it wasn't a hate crime, but a parking dispute that led their neighbor, Craig Stephen Hicks, to pull the trigger. In a recent interview with WUNC radio, Chief Chris Blue said he should've used more sensitivity when talking about the murders.

"I'm really sorry that what was intended to be informational in some ways distracted people from their need to grieve and work through a tragedy," he said.

But town leaders hope the mosque will also be an emblem of healing, as the town still reels from an international tragedy.

"It's another good sign that Chapel Hill is a place for everyone," says Kleinschmidt.

 

[0101ABA]

Durham judge Orlando Hudson sets Jan. 31 hearing in Craig Hicks murder case

Judge Orlando Hudson scheduled a hearing in the Craig Stephen Hicks case for Jan. 31 to weigh requests from the attorneys representing the 48-year-old man charged with killing three Muslim college students in the Chapel Hill shootings in 2015.

Hicks is accused of killing Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

(...)


As the two-year anniversary of the shooting deaths approaches, the court hearing later this month could provide a fuller picture of the evidence prosecutors have in the case.

Hudson scheduled the hearing on Thursday during a routine hearing in which prosecutors and defense attorneys update the chief resident Superior Court judge on the status of homicide cases pending in Durham County.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Hearing delayed for man accused of killing Muslim students in 2015

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article129680859.html

A hearing scheduled for Tuesday in the trial of a Chapel Hill man accused of killing three Muslim university students nearly two years ago has been delayed to a date uncertain, according to Durham County court officials.

Attorneys are set to argue about computer evidence seized after the shootings, and what role any of the information will have for prosecutors and the defense team at a trial.

Durham County’s chief resident Superior Court Judge, Orlando Hudson, has presided over the hearings in the Hicks case, including the one originally scheduled for Tuesday. One of the prosecutor’s witnesses was unavailable for the hearing Tuesday, forcing Hudson to postpone it.

 

[0101ABA]

Judge orders documents in case against alleged Chapel Hill shooter Craig Hicks released to defense

The man accused of killing three Muslim students in Chapel Hill more than two years ago was present in court during a hearing Tuesday.

(..,)

Tuesday's hearing dealt with a motion to release all the FBI notes in the case to the defense team. Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson ordered the documents released. While the shootings happened in Chapel Hill, it was technically a Durham County address, so the trial will be held in Durham with the Durham DA's office prosecuting.

 

[Cryptic]

Hicks has been sentenced to multiple life terms in exchange for a guilty plea.

I was hoping for the death sentence as it is the only just punishment in this case. Not only were three promising people murdered, but two of the victims were sisters- thus one family lost two promising members.

There was also other evidence that the faith of the victims served as an aggravating factor. Hicks (an atheist) had expressed a disdain for Islam on social media and witnesses said that his animosity towards the family grew after more observant and thus more visibly Islamic family members moved in.

Craig Hicks sentenced to life in 2015 murders of 3 Muslim college students in North Carolina - CNN

 

[Indy Anna]

https://chapelboro.com/news/crime/chapel-hill-shooting-sentencing-you-the-hateful-murderer
<snipped>

This was not the first time the young Muslim students had encountered the gunman. He had spent months intimidating other neighbors in the apartment complex over what Hicks perceived as issues related to parking at the complex, prosecutors said Wednesday. The hatred from Hicks took a different form when he was dealing with his white neighbors and when he was dealing with neighbors who were minorities, prosecutors said in court. When Hicks was targeting his anger at minorities, he would often wear a gun around his waist and make more threatening comments.

Hicks was known throughout the community to the extent that Barakat was working to get a restraining order against the man. Yusor had told Barakat and friends through text messages shown in court on Wednesday that she feared for her safety around Hicks. In hopes of recording an interaction with Hicks to be able to take to court in order to strengthen his argument for that order, Barakat started a recording on his cell phone when he heard a knock at the door on that night in 2015. Hicks is standing at the door, the video shows, before he levies a charge that the residents have exceeded their parking limit at the complex – which the evidence shows they had not. Barakat responds that they were within the regulations.

[...]

Video clips from the interview Chapel Hill Police conducted with Hicks after he had turned himself in were also submitted into evidence Wednesday. They show Hicks calmly describing the events that occurred, admitting to shooting the three students. He went out of his way at one point to tell the officer he was turning his head to better hear and was not intending to be disrespectful to the officer. The interview also shows Hicks presenting a story where the victims were hostile toward him, using foul language and possibly making a movement toward Hicks before the shooting. None of that was true, as shown on Barakat’s cell phone video.

more...

 

[Indy Anna]

3 life sentences without parole for man who killed 3 Muslims

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Moments after a North Carolina man pleaded guilty to gunning down three Muslim university students, a prosecutor played a cellphone video of the slayings in court Wednesday as one of the victims' relatives fainted, others wept and a man cursed the confessed killer openly.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 50, pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder more than four years after the February 2015 slayings and two months after incoming District Attorney Satana Deberry dropped plans to seek the death penalty in hopes of concluding a case she said had languished too long.

"I've wanted to plead guilty since day one," Hicks told Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson. Hudson sentenced Hicks to three consecutive life sentences without parole, tacking on five more years for shooting into a building.

[...]

Former U.S. Attorney Ripley Rand said Wednesday his office hadn't decided whether to pursue hate crime charges against Hicks when he resigned ahead of the incoming Trump administration in 2017. The federal hate crime statute requires attorneys to consider the outcome of the state trial when pursuing such charges, he said. There was "no additional punishment he could have gotten that would have meant anything," Rand said.

more...