Jury convicts man who shot three Palestinian students, including one from Haverford, in Vermont
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.
The man who shot three Palestinian students in Burlington, Vt., including one from Haverford College, during the 2023 Thanksgiving weekend was convicted on three counts of second-degree attempted murder Monday.
The students, who’d known each other since grade school in the West Bank, were together for the holiday. They had been walking along a street near the University of Vermont when a man confronted them with a handgun and fired at least four rounds before running away, according to police.
That man was later identified as Jason Eaton, 51, who did not dispute that he shot Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Aliahmad, and Kinnan Abdalhamid that Saturday evening.
His attorneys, however, argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity, presenting testimony that Eaton was suffering from a delusional, psychotic disorder after having lost his job two weeks before the shooting.
Eaton believed he was receiving messages from the CIA ordering him to “go out and shoot somebody,” said his attorneys.
Abdalhamid, the Haverford student, suffered non-life-threatening injuries; Trinity College student Aliahmad was shot in the chest; and Awartani, a Brown University student, was paralyzed from the waist down as a result of his injuries.
The case garnered national attention because of the rising tensions around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the continuing fallout of the Oct. 7 attacks close to two months prior. All three students were of Palestinian descent, speaking Arabic, and two were wearing keffiyehs at the time of the attack, according to police.
Abdalhamid, who was 20 at the time, returned to campus weeks later, calling on school leaders to join him in calling for a ceasefire.
“I’ve gotten more than enough support as an individual,” Abdalhamid said in December 2023. “I’m advocating for the school to back a ceasefire.”
The parents of the victims and groups including the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee asked that the attack be investigated as a hate crime, though prosecutors could not support the charges.
The Chittenden County State’s Attorney Office is seeking a life sentence for Eaton.
