The parents of three Palestinian students who were shot in Vermont have asked the police to look into the attack as a hate crime.
Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ahmed, and Kinnan Abdalhamid were stopped and shot by a man close to the University of Vermont campus, according to Burlington police.
The police are looking into why it happened, but they said the people who were attacked were wearing a traditional scarf and speaking Arabic.
Someone who is thought to have committed a crime has been taken into custody by the police.
The police in Burlington have identified the suspect as Jason J Eaton, who is 48 years old, according to CBS News, which is partnered with the BBC in the US.
The local police chief Jon Mura said that two victims are okay, but the third one is hurt really bad.
Three students went to Ramallah Friends School, a private non-profit school in Ramallah run by Quakers, as said by their family.
Haverford College in Pennsylvania chose Mr Abdalhamid to be one of its students. Two more people have been identified as Mr. Awartani, a student at Brown University, and Mr. Ahmed, who goes to Trinity College in Connecticut.
Rich Price, who is related to one of the victims, said that three men in their 20s were at an eight-year-old’s birthday party.
We never thought something like this could happen in our family’s neighborhood. We didn’t expect them to be walking down the street and experience this.
“A few minutes after they left, we saw police cars with sirens and flashing lights go by our house. ” And we thought, wow, something strange is happening.
“I had no idea it was my nephew and his friends. ”
Before, the families of the victims shared a message through the pro-Palestinian non-profit group Middle East Understanding, according to Reuters.
They said: “We want the police to thoroughly investigate this and consider it a hate crime. ”
“We won’t feel better until the person who shot is punished. ”
After the shooting, the Council on American-Islamic relations said they would give $10,000 to anyone who can help catch the person responsible.
Bernie Sanders, who ran for president as a Democrat from Vermont, spoke out against the recent violence.
Mr Sanders wrote that he is very upset that three young Palestinians were shot in Burlington, Vermont. There is no place for hate here, or anywhere else.
Ambassador Husam Zomlot, who is in charge of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, shared a picture of the three people on social media and said, “We need to stop the hate crimes against Palestinians. “
Date: