Twenty-year-old Hisham Awartani paralyzed from the chest down after a bullet lodged in his spine, his family say
One of the three college students of Palestinian descent who were shot in Vermont last month is paralyzed from the chest down after a bullet lodged in his spine, the student’s family said.
Hisham Awartani, a 20-year-old student at Brown University who grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was walking with two friends near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington on 25 November when, police say, 48-year-old Jason Eaton shot them with a handgun in a suspected hate crime. Eaton has pleaded not guilty.
Fucking psycho just opened fire. Said no words. No interaction. Just opened fire on people he doesn’t like because of where they’re from.
Hope that fuck enjoys the wind and the sunshine while he can still experience it.
And the fucker has the nerve to plead not guilty!
The students were wearing black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarves and conversing in a mix of English and Arabic when the gunman confronted them, according to charging documents filed in court.
You literally can’t be free to express your culture in “the great melting pot.”
You can in most places, crazies aren’t that common. It’s major headlines because this is wild to happen at a prestigious university city
Muslims are absolutely not free to express their culture and, if they are Arabs, language in many places in the U.S. Sure, they don’t get shot. They do get called terrorists. And harassed. It’s not even just Muslims. Sikhs get called terrorists because they wear turbans and ignorant racists fucks think that’s what Arabs wear or something. I hate to tell you this, but large swathes of the American people don’t like foreigners or minorities. They’re called Trump voters.
This is not true. I lived in one of the most conservative cities in the US for many years, and the Middle Eastern and African immigrants openly spoke whatever their native language is. They avoided it only in the typical circumstances, when other speakers weren’t around. This is not an actual concern for immigrants.
As for the level of xenophobia, it’s true a lot of people don’t like foreigners, but you are overstating the level of open opposition. Just like how a lot of people don’t like Trump supporters and even personally feel them to be fascists, but claiming that Trump supporters are not free to express their opinions is completely false.
this is so devastating; it was way too much to hope that all three would be okay.
All I can say is that it’s good to hear that none of the three of them will lose their lives because of this, but how horrible to be paralyzed at 20. Bad enough at any age, but his life was just starting.
And he’d got into an Ivy league university, too.
Just tragic. As I said, the only bright spot is they all survived. But at such a cost.
What business this 48yo old
mferterrorist even had with these random students? It’s so fucked. I hope community would support the victims.
