A 40-year-old man was charged with attempted murder on Monday after he shot three students in Vermont who may have been targeted because of their Palestinian heritage, amid a rise in racist acts in the United States since the start of the Gaza war.
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That attack sparked outrage, with President Joe Biden saying he was “appalled,” according to his spokesman.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said that “an investigation is underway, including into whether this was a hate crime.”
The suspect, identified as Jason Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday evening after a search of his home near where the incident occurred the previous evening, Burlington police said.
AFP
He is suspected of firing a .380-caliber handgun four times at the three 20-year-old students in this northern Vermont town, hitting all three.
“One of them suffered injuries that could affect him for the rest of his life,” Police Chief Jon Murad said at a news conference. The other two were described as being in “stable condition” on Sunday.
The three students, who were spending the Thanksgiving holiday in Burlington near the Canadian border, were walking down the street and chatting in English and Arabic when the suspect appeared in front of them without a word and opened fire in an attempt to escape, Mr. explained. Murad. Two victims wore a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf.
According to authorities, two of them are Americans and the third is a legal resident of the United States.
According to the American press, the suspect remained in custody and had no possibility of being released on bail.
“Hateful act”
“Although we have no evidence yet that this was a hate crime, it is very clear that we are dealing with an act of hate,” said Chittenden County Prosecutor Sarah George.
In the United States, a hate crime is an act against a person who is targeted because of certain characteristics of their identity, such as ethnicity, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or disability.
In a statement on Sunday, the families of the three victims called on police to treat the case as such.
The Arab American Committee Against Discrimination said it had “reason to believe that this shooting occurred because the victims are Arab.”
“The fact that something like this happened to them shows the level of tension and hatred that exists in certain parts of the United States,” said an uncle of one of the victims, Rich Price, who the victims had recently been with before being sent to prison were targeted.
In the United States, the context of the war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip has raised tensions since October 7 and led to an increase in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts.
In early October, near Chicago, a six-year-old Muslim boy was stabbed to death by a septuagenarian accused of a racist crime, an act that police say is directly linked to the ongoing war in Gaza.
In California, a professor is charged with involuntary manslaughter after the death of a Jewish man at a rally in early November that led to a clash between pro-Palestinians and pro-Israelis.
“We have all seen a very significant increase in the number and frequency of threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities across the country since October 7,” the attorney general noted on Monday.
“There is understandable fear in these communities,” he added.
He assured that the Justice Department is “closely monitoring what impact the conflict in the Middle East may have on terrorist organizations and violent extremists in the United States and abroad.”