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DURHAM, North Carolina – An attorney broadcast a video on cellphone showing the killings in court Wednesday, while a family member of the victim had fainted, that others had cried and that a man had openly cursed confessions. killer.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 50, pleaded guilty to three counts of first degree murder more than four years after the February 2015 murders and two months after the new District Attorney, Satana Deberry, abandoned his project to seek the death penalty in the hope of closing a deal she had said. languishes too long.
"I wanted to plead guilty since the first day," said Hicks, Superior Court Judge, Orlando Hudson. Hudson sentenced Hicks to three consecutive life sentences without parole, but was sentenced to five more years for shooting in a building.
Hicks broke into a 23-year-old Chapel Hill condo owned by Deah Barakat, and shot dead Barakat, his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and the woman's sister, 19-year-old Razan Abu-Salha.
At the time, Chapel Hill police had stated that Mr. Hicks claimed to have been provoked by the competition for parking spaces in the compound where they lived. Family members said the victims were targeted because they were Muslims and asked the federal authorities to lay hate crime charges.
The authorities later reported that they did not have sufficient evidence to prosecute Hicks for hate crimes, said Joe Cheshire, a lawyer for the victims' families. He said the officials could not overcome Hicks' initial explanation that the violence had been caused by a parking conflict.
Family members and prosecutors spent the better part of the two-hour hearing announcing to the judge that Hicks was motivated by fanaticism against non-whites. Hicks unveiled a handgun at the hip while he wanted to intimidate his Korean neighbor, a black remodeling worker and his possible victims, said District Attorney Satana Deberry.
Aggressive atheist, Hicks also expressed his disgust for Christians and Jews.
"You played in the hands of the worst religious – the fanatics, the radicals – who want to shred this world," said Mohammed Abu-Salha, the woman's father, in court. Murders were part of the growing hatred against Muslims, he said.
Courts have been shown videotaped. Hicks was telling the police that after grabbing his gun and extra bullets and knocking on his neighbors' door, he had lost control of his situation when Barakat had insulted him. "I was wrong, I reacted excessively," Hicks told the interrogators.
This story was contradicted by a mobile phone video, presented in court, in which Barakat records his own death.
The video scrolls as Barakat approaches the door to record the exchange with his often boiling neighbor. He hoped that this could be evidence of a restrictive legal order to keep him at bay, Cheshire said.
Under the supervision of the parents and siblings of the victims, the video showed Hicks complaining that Barakat and the Abu-Salha sisters were using three parking spaces. Prosecutors said it was not true. When Barakat responded that they did not use more spaces than the condo rules allow, Hicks replied, "You will disrespect me, I will do it …" Hicks took a weapon at his waist and fired several times. .
The phone fell. We hear the sound of women screaming, followed by several other blows. Then silence.
Women were crying openly in the courtroom and a young man cursed Hicks. Barakat's older sister, Dr. Suzanne Barakat, fainted. She then appeared at a press conference with family members and a lawyer said she was fine.
"In 36 seconds, Mr. Hicks executed three people," said District Attorney General Kendra Montgomery-Blinn.
In his confession, Hicks said that after the fall of the woman, he was shot in the head at close range. The results of the autopsy confirmed his description.
Barakat, a dental student at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, and Yusor Abu-Salha had been married for less than two months and she had just been accepted into dental school. Razan had just been on the Dean's List at North Carolina State University. Barakat and the Abu-Salha sisters prepared meals for the homeless, worked to improve a poor district of Raleigh and planned a trip to Turkey to help Syrian war refugees, Montgomery-Blinn said.
Prosecutors and family members contrasted the murderer's academic and humanitarian work with that of Hicks. An ex-wife told prosecutors that Hicks was obsessed with Michael Douglas' "Falling Down", published in 1993, about a frustrated, unemployed white man who reacted to personal and social dysfunction with increasing violence.
Hicks' third marriage was disintegrating and he had recently quit his job with an angry auto parts company, Montgomery-Blinn said. The workers there described it as constantly playing computer-based shooter games, she said.
Hicks listened attentively throughout the session, hands tied.
Former US Attorney Ripley Rand said on Wednesday that his office had not yet decided to file a hate crime suit against Mr. Hicks when he resigned in front of the new Trump government in 2017. The Federal law on hate crimes requires that lawyers consider the outcome of the charges lawsuit, he said. There was "no extra punishment that he could have got that would have meant anything," Rand said.
Kelly Laco, spokeswoman for the Justice Department, declined to comment on the investigation of hate crimes.
Cheshire said the families were not satisfied with the lack of prosecution.
"It hurt a lot of feelings and added to the false story," he said. "Our government has let down this family and our multicultural democracy."
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