Vermont Jury Convicts Jason Eaton for Shooting Three Palestinian Students
Jason Eaton, 51, was found guilty of attempted murder for shooting three Palestinian college students in Burlington, Vermont in November 2023. The jury rejected his insanity defense.
Vermont man convicted of attempted murder in 2023 shooting of Palestinian students
A Vermont jury has found Jason Eaton, 51, guilty of attempted murder for shooting three Palestinian college students near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington in November 2023, aljazeera.com reports. The jury rejected Eaton's defense that he was not criminally responsible due to insanity.
Eaton now faces up to life in prison. The attack left Hisham Awartani paralysed from the waist down and wounded his two friends, Tahseen Aliahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid. Awartani and Aliahmad, seated in the front row of the courtroom, smiled and embraced those around them as the verdict was read.
The jury deliberated for several hours on Monday following a week-long trial that included testimony from all three victims and psychiatric experts called by both sides. Sentencing has not yet been scheduled, and Eaton was remanded into custody to await it.
Eaton did not dispute firing the shots. His lawyers, led by Joshua O'Hara of the Chittenden County Public Defender Office, argued he was suffering from a delusional psychotic disorder and believed the CIA and Israel's Mossad were transmitting messages to him through FM radio. O'Hara told jurors that Eaton believed he had been enlisted by intelligence agencies for "overwatch duty" to protect a Jewish family across the street, and that God was commanding him to act.
Prosecutors countered that a state psychiatrist had concluded Eaton did not have a mental disease or defect and that the evidence demonstrated a clear intent to kill. The jury sided with the prosecution after deliberating for several hours.
Awartani, Aliahmad, and Abdalhamid — all now 23 — grew up together in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank before coming to the United States for university. Awartani was enrolled at Brown University, Aliahmad at Trinity College, and Abdalhamid at Haverford College. They were visiting Awartani's grandmother in Burlington over the Thanksgiving holiday when they went for an evening walk near the campus.
Awartani testified that the group was smoking cigarettes and speaking a mix of English and Arabic, and that two of them were wearing keffiyehs. He said Eaton was standing on the porch of his apartment building before approaching the three men without a word. When Eaton was roughly five to ten feet away, Awartani testified, he drew a handgun and opened fire.
Awartani was shot in the chest, leaving him paralysed from the waist down. Aliahmad was struck in the collarbone, and Abdalhamid was shot in the right buttock. Police subsequently found three shotguns and a Ruger .380-calibre handgun in Eaton's apartment; crime laboratory testing identified the handgun as the weapon used in the attack.
The shooting prompted calls for a hate crime investigation. No hate crime charges were ultimately filed.
Source: NYT US News