This is not even a question according to the Muslim community in North Carolina and probably all over America. It is a certainty. And the perpetrator should pay the price for it. The three victims of the Chapel Hill shootings that took place on Tuesday evening in Chapel Hill were Deah Barakat (23), his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha (21) and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha (19). The person charged with these murders is Craig Stephen Hicks (46).
According to the victims’ fathers, the three were killed because of their religion and the Muslim attire they wore. In consequence, leaders of the Muslim community are asking that authorities accord the killings the due gravity and treat them with the severity required of a ‘hate crime’. But what is riding on this label? Does it make a significant difference from a legal point of view? The CNN explains that it does.
If a crime qualifies as ‘hateful’ (which, according to the F.B.I., is defined as a regular crime, but with an added bias), it can earn the defendant a much heavier sentence. Deryl Dedmon, for instance, who was charged for killing James Craig Anderson, an African-American, on racial considerations, was given two consecutive life sentences. At the moment, the evidence collated does not seem to support such a charge. The initial statement released by Chapel Hill Police said that the crime seemed to have been motivated by a dispute over parking slots. However, they are now in the process of searching Craig Hicks’ computer for evidence. Also, Chapel Hill Police Chief, Christopher Blue, has promised to give the hate crime possibility due consideration.
One post attributed to Craig Hicks might suggest hatred of the Muslim religion. The post reads as follows: “When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I.” But CNN legal analyst, Mark O’Mara, considers that this is not enough to justify a ‘hate crime’ verdict. Craig Hicks’ wife has declared that the crime was not motivated by religion. Another student who lived in the condominium complex supports this fact. Samantha Maness (25) said that Craig Hicks was hostile and aggressive to everyone, not just the victims.
Other neighbors had complained as well in the past about Hicks’s abrasiveness and harshness, describing him as an angry man who was constantly harassing other members of the community either about parking spaces or about noise. The victims’ families, however, feel very strongly that the students paid the price for wearing hijabs. Abu-Salha, the father of Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, said that one of his girls had recently spoken to him about a neighbor who had been hateful: “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.”