Deah Shaddy Barakat, a 23-year-old male of Middle Eastern descent, was tragically killed on February 10, 2015, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Barakat, along with his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were shot to death in their home at the Finley Forest Condominiums on Summerwalk Circle. The incident occurred around 5:15 p.m. when local police responded to a report of gunshots.
Upon arrival, they found Barakat lying dead in the front doorway, bleeding from the head, while the two sisters were found dead in the kitchen and the doorway of that room, respectively. All three victims had been killed with gunshot wounds to the head and were pronounced dead at the scene.
The perpetrator, Craig Stephen Hicks, a 46-year-old male, turned himself in to Chapel Hill police later that day and was arrested. Hicks was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The initial investigation by the Chapel Hill Police Department indicated that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking. Hicks was cooperating with investigators, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice also launched their own investigations into the shooting. However, federal authorities could not find sufficient evidence to charge Hicks with a hate crime.
On February 16, 2015, Hicks was indicted by a Durham County grand jury on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling. The trial was scheduled to take place in the summer of 2019. On June 12, 2019, Hicks pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The case drew significant attention and raised concerns about the possibility of the crime being hate-motivated, given the victims' Muslim faith and Middle Eastern descent. However, Hicks' wife and attorney stressed that the incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims' faiths, attributing it instead to the mundane issue of a parking dispute.
