Off The Grid: Another Senseless Shooting

On Tuesday, Feb. 10, three students lost their lives to a senseless act of violence. Gunshots were heard coming from a Chapel Hill condominium, and the police arrived to find Mr. Barakat, 23, dead beside the front door, bleeding from the head. Yusor, 21, and Razan lay lifeless in the kitchen. An hour later, their neighbor Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, turned himself into the sheriff’s office in Pittsboro, 20 miles south.

The motives behind the shootings are still not entirely known. Many believe it was because of the students’ Muslim faith, while his wife suggests it was over a parking dispute. Both of these motives seem ridiculous to me. Is someone else’s choice in faith so upsetting to you that you’re willing to take their lives, thus ruining your own? Is being vindicated in a parking dispute worth life in jail? Jonathan M. Katz of The New York Times writes:

A motive for the shooting may never be known. But interviews with more than a dozen of the victims’ friends and family members, lawyers, police officers and others, make two central points: before the shootings, the students took concerted steps to appease a menacing neighbor, and none were parked that day in a way that would have set off an incident involving their cars.

The state is seeking the death penalty for Mr. Hicks, which it very well may get. But at the end of the day, no matter what may come of Mr. Hicks, three innocent people lost their lives and that should have never happened in the first place.

-Saher K. Off The Grid Team

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