Ten years ago, three Muslim college students were gunned down in a Chapel Hill apartment.
On Feb. 10, 2015, Deah Barakat, 23; his wife, 21-year-old Yusor Abu-Salha; and her sister, 19-year-old Razan Abu-Salha, were murdered by their neighbor in what prosecutors called a hate crime against Muslims.
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Craig Hicks pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in June 2019 and is serving three life sentences in prison. Federal authorities couldn't find sufficient evidence to charge him with a hate crime.
Deah was shot in the doorway shortly after opening the door, with eight wounds to his head, chest and hands, according to now-former Durham County Assistant District Attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn. The sisters were shot execution-style in the kitchen, with close-range shots to their heads.
"I stepped in as I shot him, to be honest with you, and they started screaming, and I saw the one that mouthed off to me before, so I shot at her, and I walked over and shot her and shot the other one," Hicks told police hours later.
Farris Barakat, Deah's brother, has worked hard to correct details of the shooting, which Chapel Hill police initially attributed to a parking dispute at the complex where Hicks and the three students lived.
"That was just the farthest thing that you could say it was," he told WRAL News in 2021.
Farris said he believes the killings were racially motivated, noting that Hicks had a history of hate speech and was known to harass Deah and his wife. The Chapel Hill police chief later said he regretted including the parking dispute narrative.
Remembering Deah, Yusor and Razan
Deah Barakat, 23, was a dental student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who was determined to use his skills to help refugees and others in need.
Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, who married Barakat six weeks before the shootings, was starting dental school at UNC-Chapel Hill and had worked on the Turkey-Syria border to help refugees.
Razan Abu-Salha, 19, was an architecture student at North Carolina State University who worked with homeless people in Raleigh and raised money for Palestinian children in Gaza.
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