by Ifra Mahmood, staff reporter
Another horrifying shooting has occurred in America, leaving people confused and shocked. Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were shot in a Chapel Hill apartment located in North Carolina.
On Tuesday February 9th in a quiet neighborhood a woman heard gunshots along with screams and called 911. “If you are shooting someone over a parking spot, you are not thinking rationally. To put myself in the head of someone who isn’t thinking rationally is an exercise in futility,” said trigonometry teacher Mr. Gardner.
Police arrived to the scene and found three college students dead. The three people were a newlywed couple and the woman’s sister. All three of them lived near the University of California and were Muslims of Arab descent. They were also high achievers who regularly volunteered in the area.
These young students were shot by their neighbor, Craig Stephen Hicks a middle aged white man who went missing after the shooting occurred.
“The police said that Hicks, a self-proclaimed ‘anti-theist’, killed them because of a parking disagreement but the victims’ families believe it was a hate crime,” according to an article by the Daily Mail.
Families of the victims’ believe that they were shot because they were different. The shootings lead to a worldwide discussion of whether it was a hate crime of not. On twitter worldwide the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter was trending for hours. Many people said that if it was a Muslim who shot three students there would be headlines everywhere.
“I think that it’s wrong for this story not to be shown on the news because people need to know that innocent lives are being taken and just because they’re Muslim doesn’t mean they’re not important,” junior Demetri Mihalios said.
