US man convicted in 2023 shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont

A jury in Vermont found Jason Eaton guilty of attempted murder for shooting three Palestinian college students near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington in November 2023. The panel deliberated for several hours following a week-long trial that featured testimony from the three victims and expert psychiatric witnesses called by both sides. Eaton was returned to custody and will be sentenced at a later date. The three men — Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Aliahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid — had been visiting Awartani’s grandmother over Thanksgiving when they took a walk near campus after dark. Awartani told the court that Eaton approached their group from a porch and, when about five to 10 feet away, pulled out a handgun and opened fire. Awartani was shot in the chest and has been left paralysed from the waist down; Aliahmad was shot in the collarbone and Abdalhamid in the right buttock. Eaton did not contest that he fired the shots, but his defence argued he was legally insane at the time, presenting testimony that he suffered from a delusional psychotic disorder and believed intelligence agencies were sending messages to him via FM radio. Defence counsel said Eaton thought he had been recruited to “overwatch” a nearby Jewish family and was acting under divine command. Prosecutors countered that a state psychiatrist found no mental disease or defect and said the evidence supported an intent to kill. Police recovered three shotguns and a Ruger .380-calibre handgun from Eaton’s apartment; laboratory testing linked the Ruger to the November shooting. The attack prompted calls for a hate crime investigation, but authorities did not file hate crime charges. Awartani and Aliahmad sat in the courtroom’s front row and embraced others as the verdict was read.