On Tuesday, February 10 a little after 5 PM, two women called 911 after hearing gunshots and people screaming near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When police arrived on the scene, they found three people dead from gunshot wounds, a married couple and the woman’s sister. Someone murdered the three victims, all young Muslim students.
According to The New York Times, a short time after the shooting, police arrested a neighbor of the victims, Craig Stephen Hicks, and charged him in the killings. Police reported that the shooting was over a long-term dispute over parking. The news of the killings immediately focused on whether the shooting was predicated on the man’s dislike for the three victims’ religion, or simply an act of anger over a disagreement.
The New York Times also reported that police said that no immediate link could be established between the three victims’ religion and the shooting. When police questioned Hicks’ wife about a possible religious connection, she said, “I can say with absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith, but it was related to a long-standing parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbors.”