Man charged with killing three Muslims may face death penalty

Craig Stephen Hicks, charged with first-degree murder in the killing of three Muslim college students may face a death penalty trial, Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson Jr. ruled Monday.

Hudson said that prosecutors had two aggravating factors and that Hicks is "death penalty qualified."

Hicks is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the Feb. 10 killings of 23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat; his wife, 21-year-old Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha; and her sister, 19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

Prosecutors said that Hicks confessed; that he was arrested with the murder weapon, a handgun that ballistics experts matched to shell casings recovered at the apartment; that there was gunshot residue on his hands; and that blood from one of the victims was on his pants.

Police say Hicks, 46, appears to have been motivated by a long-running dispute over parking spaces at the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, condominium complex where he lived in the same building as Barakat and Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha.

The victims' families are adamant that they were targeted because they were Muslims and have pushed for hate-crime charges. The FBI is conducting what it has called a "parallel preliminary inquiry" to the homicide investigation to determine whether any federal laws were violated, including hate crime statutes.

Search warrants filed by Chapel Hill police said Barakat was shot in the head near the entrance to his condo. The two women were found in or near the kitchen. Eight spent shell casings were found at the crime scene, investigators said.

Earlier search warrants listed a dozen firearms recovered from the condo unit Hicks shared with his wife, in addition to the handgun he had with him when he turned himself in after the shootings.

Hicks, who was unemployed and studying to become a paralegal, posted online that he is an atheist and a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Neighbors described him as an angry man who had frequent confrontations with other building residents over parking or loud music, sometimes with a gun holstered at his hip. He often discussed firearms in his social media posts, one of which included a photo of a .38-caliber revolver.

The Associated Press