The suspect who gunned down a young newlywed Muslim couple and the wife’s sister was indicted on murder charges on Monday, according to NBCNews.com.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was indicted on three counts of murder and one count of discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling.
The three victims have been identified as Deah Barakat, 23, a second-year dentistry student at the University of North Carolina; his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, who planned to start at the dentistry school this fall; and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, a student at North Carolina State University.
Local police have said that the primary motive in the killings was a longstanding dispute over a parking space, but the father of the women has labeled the murders as “hate crime.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations have been very vocal in calling on police to address “speculation” that bias may have been a motive, especially given certain rants that have come out on Hicks’ Facebook page, many of them anti-religion.
The FBI also announced its own inquiry into the case late last week.
Story developing…
Shooter Of Three Young Muslim Students Indicted For Murder was originally published on newsone.com
