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A makeshift memorial for Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha in the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry in Chapel Hill, on 11 February 2015.
A makeshift memorial for Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha in the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry in Chapel Hill, on 11 February 2015. Photograph: Chris Keane/Reuters
A makeshift memorial for Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha in the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry in Chapel Hill, on 11 February 2015. Photograph: Chris Keane/Reuters

North Carolina man pleads guilty to 2015 murders of three Muslim students

This article is more than 4 years old

Judge said Craig Stephen Hicks agreed as part of his plea to accept three consecutive life sentences without parole

A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to gunning down three Muslim university students, as one of the victims’ relatives fainted in court, others wept openly and a man hurled an expletive at the confessed killer.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 50, entered the plea to three counts of first-degree murder in a packed Durham courtroom. It came more than four years after the February 2015 killings and two months after the incoming district attorney Satana Deberry dropped plans to seek the death penalty in hopes of concluding a case that she said had languished too long.

“I’ve wanted to plead guilty since day one,” Hicks told superior court judge Orlando Hudson. The judge said Hicks had agreed as part of his plea to accept three consecutive life sentences without parole and 64 to 89 months for the crime of discharging a gun into a building.

Police say Hicks burst into a condo in Chapel Hill owned by 23-year-old Deah Barakat and fatally shot Barakat; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her 19-year-old sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

At the time of the shootings, Chapel Hill police said Hicks claimed he was provoked by competition over parking spaces at the condo complex. Relatives of the victims said their family members were targeted because they were Muslim, and they asked federal authorities to pursue hate crime charges. Authorities later indicated they did not have sufficient evidence to successfully prosecute Hicks on those charges.

Moments after Hicks entered his plea, assistant district attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn played a cellphone video of the slayings as the victims’ parents and siblings watched from the front row.

Women wept openly and a young man hurled an expletive at Hicks after watching the video. The prosecutor also showed a video of Hicks’s confession and a series of still photos portraying happy moments in the victims’ lives. Barakat’s older sister, Dr Suzanne Barakat, fainted while watching the video. She later appeared at a news conference with other family members, and an attorney said she was OK.

Montgomery-Blinn said Deah Barakat had turned on his cellphone’s camera to capture an exchange with Hicks, who she said was often seething during his previous encounters with the victims.

The video shows Hicks complaining that Barakat and the Abu-Salha sisters are using three parking spaces. When Barakat responds that they are not taking any more spaces than condo rules allow, Hicks pulls a gun from his holster and fires several times.

The phone drops to the floor inside the front door, the sounds of women screaming can be heard, and then several more shots are heard.

“In 36 seconds, Mr Hicks executed three people,” Montgomery-Blinn said.

Barakat was shot several times as he stood in his doorway, autopsy results showed. His wife and her sister were shot in the head at close range inside the condo.

Barakat, a dental student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Yusor had been married for less than two months, and she had just been accepted to the dental school. Razan had just made the dean’s list in her first semester at North Carolina State University. All three were making plans to visit Turkey during their coming summer break to volunteer in a dental clinic at a camp for Syrian war refugees.

The victims’ families and Muslim advocacy groups had asked federal authorities to pursue hate crimes charges against Hicks. Joe Cheshire, a prominent defense attorney who has been working with the victims’ families and guiding them through the legal process over the past four years, said at a news conference after the plea hearing that authorities could not satisfy themselves that Hicks’s actions met all the required conditions for bringing a successful hate crime prosecution.

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