A murder in North Carolina

A terrible story out of North Carolina today:

Police charged a Chapel Hill man Wednesday with first-degree murder in the deaths of three Muslim students in a quiet neighborhood near Meadowmont just south of N.C. 54.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, is being held in the Durham County Jail on three counts of first-degree murder

Hicks is accused of shooting his Finley Forest neighbors, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and Abu-Salha’s sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh.

Police are investigating, according to NewsObserver.com, and “have not offered a motive for the shootings.” There has been, according to NewsObserver.com, significant speculation on Twitter and elsewhere about this being a bias crime. We will have to wait for the investigation to unfold for an answer, though some are speculating — based on unverified social media accounts — that Hicks was a radical atheist and that the shooting was anti-Muslim or anti-religious in nature.

The restraint in the major media makes sense — making assumptions about motive without fully investigating make little sense — but I also wonder whether the restraint we are seeing has to do with the ethnic dynamics. Something tells me that, were the shooter Muslim and the three victims not, this story would be playing out very differently in the media. This is speculation, of course, a question for the broader media, but I do wonder.

Send me an e-mail.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet