Three Muslim students were shot dead on Tuesday night by a 46-year-old man in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
At 5:11 p.m. police were called to the Finley Forest Condominiums on Summerwalk Circle, an area housing students and academics, where they arrested Craig Stephen Hicks of Chapel Hill and found the three victims already dead, reports WNCN.
The three were identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat (23), his wife Yusor Mohammad (21) and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha (19).
Of the couple Barakat was a second-year student of dentistry at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his wife planned to attend the same School of Dentistry in the fall. Her sister was a student at North Carolina State University.
Barakat volunteered with a charity providing emergency dental care to children living under the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to the British Independent.
He wrote on Twitter in January "it's so freaking sad to hear people saying we should ‘kill Jews’ or ‘kill Palestinians’. As if that's going to solve anything."
Hicks, who was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, had posted on Facebook saying that he was an atheist, and on his page he frequently attacked various religions.