|
 Newlywed Deah Barakat, 23, a University of North Carolina dental
student, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan
Abu-Salha, 19, a student at North Carolina State University, were
gunned down on Tuesday in a condominium about two miles (three km)
from the UNC campus in Chapel Hill.
Police charged the couple's neighbor, Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, with
murder. Investigators say initial findings indicate a dispute over
parking prompted the shooting, but they are looking into whether
Hicks was motivated by hatred toward the victims because they were
Muslim.
The FBI said it was opening its own preliminary inquiry, separate
from local police investigations. A statement by FBI spokeswoman
Shelley Lynch did not specify if the inquiry would include whether
the shooting was a hate crime.
The case has garnered international attention and Turkish President
Tayyip Erdogan criticized President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe
Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday for not speaking
about the incident.
 "If you stay silent when faced with an incident like this, and don't
make a statement, the world will stay silent towards you," Erdogan
said during a visit to Mexico. The Turkish president, a devout Muslim who has been outspoken
against what he sees as rising Islamophobia in the West, has
strained relations with Obama on issues such as the war in Syria.
The White House said on Wednesday it would wait for the results of
the police investigation before commenting on the killings in North
Carolina.
The murders have prompted vigils and the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter
on social media, and raised concerns among some Muslim advocates in
the United States who say they have seen an increase in threats
against their communities in recent weeks.
Speaking to mourners in a field near a mosque in Raleigh, the
women's father, Mohammad Abu-Salha, called on Obama to insist that
the FBI investigate the case as a possible hate crime.
"This has hate crime written all over it," he said. "If they don't
listen carefully, I will yell."
He said the victims' families did not want revenge or care about
Hicks' punishment, but rather sought to ensure that other young
people in the United States would not suffer similar violence.
The FBI designates as hate crimes those that are motivated or partly
motivated by bias against race, religion, ethnicity, disability,
gender or sexual orientation. Such crimes generally carry greater
penalties.
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According to FBI statistics, U.S. law enforcement agencies reported
roughly 6,900 offenses motivated by bias in 2013. Of those, 165
offenses were crimes resulting from bias against Muslims, the data
shows. None were murders.
ANGRY OVER PARKING, NOISE
Hicks' wife and some neighbors have said he appeared angry about
parking at the condominium where he lived, not motivated by hatred
of Muslims.
A paralegal student at Durham Technical Community College since
2012, Hicks portrayed himself on Facebook as an atheist and filled
his social media page with anti-religion posts.
Neighbor Samantha Maness, 25, said he was known in the condo
community as someone quick to anger over parking troubles and noise.
He had confronted her and friends in the past when he thought they
were being too loud, she said.
She said she never saw him show any animosity along religious or
racial lines, describing his behavior as "equal opportunity anger
towards the residents here."
The suspect's wife of seven years, Karen Hicks, told news station
WRAL she believed her husband grew upset when he returned home from
school on Tuesday and found someone in his designated parking space.
She suspects something in him "snapped the wrong way," she said in a
videotaped interview.
Police in Chapel Hill had not released any new details about their
investigation on Thursday.
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Additional reporting by Alberto
Fajardo in Mexico City; Editing by Frances Kerry and Cynthia
Osterman)
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