Jason J. Eaton, Burlington, Vermont ‘radical citizen’ arrested in possible hate crime shooting of 3 Palestinian students. Students identified as; Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid.
Fallout from Hamas-Israel conflict? Vermont authorities have arrested a gunman suspected in unleashing a ‘bias attack’ in Burlington against three Palestinian college students over the weekend.
Jason J. Eaton, 48, a self described ‘radical citizen,’ (see below) was taken into custody Sunday afternoon after he was identified as a suspect, Burlington police said, according to CNN.
Eaton lives in an apartment building near where the triple shooting happened a day earlier and was arrested Sunday around 3:30 p.m. for allegedly wounding the three 20-year-olds, authorities said.
Gunman shot at victims without saying a single word
Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid were all shot Saturday while visiting Awartani’s grandmother for a Thanksgiving meal, police said.
Awartani is a student at Brown University, Abdalhamid at Haverford College in Pennsylvania and Ahmad at Trinity University, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee said.
The trio were rushed to the University of Vermont Medical Center, where two were listed in stable condition and third in serious condition.
‘All three victims survived the initial shooting, however, two of them are currently in ICU and one of the students has sustained very critical and serious injuries,’ the ADC said in a statement.
At the time of the shooting, Eaton is alleged to have confronted the three students without uttering a word before firing a multitude of gunshots at the college students before then fleeing the scene, 6abc reported.
A lawyer representing the victims’ families, Abed Ayoub, told CNN at least two of the men were wearing traditional Palestinian Keffiyeh scarves when they were attacked.
The students were also reportedly speaking Arabic when the gunman opened fire, according to the ADC.
‘On Sunday afternoon ATF agents who were conducting a canvass at the location of the shooting encountered and detained Jason J Eaton,’ Burlington Police said.
‘Detectives completed a search warrant for Mr Eaton’s residence in the apartment building in front of which the shooting took place.
‘Evidence collected during that search warrant and additional evidence developed during the course of this investigation gave investigators and prosecutors probable cause to believe that Mr Eaton perpetrated the shooting.’
Radical citizen
Eaton’s shocked mother Mary Reed told The Daily Beast he has had his ‘struggles’ in the past but that nothing indicated he was capable of such violence. She said he is a ‘very religious’ person, but had seemed normal when she spent Thanksgiving with him on Thursday, two days before the shooting.
‘He, like all of us, thinks the world is a mess. He is a spiritual person,’ she said.
On his Twitter profile, Eaton refers to himself as a ‘radical citizen.’ The bio also makes a possible reference to the far right-wing militia, the Oath Keepers. He gives his location as a ‘Parallel Universe.’
His account is private but his mentions so that he has been involved in conversations surrounding the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Dramatic rise in bias crimes since ignition of Hamas-Israel conflict last month
Police are probing whether the shooting was a hate crime amid growing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian rhetoric in the US in relation to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
‘In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,’ Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said on Sunday. ‘And I have already been in touch with federal investigatory and prosecutorial partners to prepare for that if it’s proven.’
The incident follows an Illinois landlord last month stabbing a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy 26 times, with the 71 year old suspect admitted he was ‘incited’ by the war between Israel and Hamas.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said it had seen a trebling of in reports of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias incidents in the month after the Hamas attack which killed more than 1,200 people on October 7 and the ensuing attacks on Gaza which have led to upwards of 14,000 killed, mostly civilians.
Eaton is expected to be arraigned Monday.
