2023-11-28 08:25:00
(CNN) — One of three Palestinian college students shot while walking in Vermont may not be able to move his legs for the rest of his life following a bullet struck his spine, his family told CNN, describing the moments before the attack.
Hisham Awartani, a 20-year-old Brown University student, is beginning to accept the “long road ahead” following he and two old friends from the Israeli-occupied West Bank were shot while walking in Burlington on Saturday. said his mother, Elizabeth Price.
“He’s just a very resilient young man and he’s been trying to keep everyone’s spirits up by joking around and trying to be as calm as possible,” Price said. “We are determined to work with him, support him and get him the best care possible.”
“I think Hisham has the determination… to regain movement in his legs, but doctors currently say it is not possible,” he added.
Elizabeth Price left and her son Hisham Awartani (right), 20, who was shot in an attack his family has described as hateful for being Palestinian.
The suspect in the attack, Jason J. Eaton, 48, was arrested this Sunday and charged with three counts of attempted murder, to which he pleaded not guilty. Authorities say they have not determined a motive for the attack, but said they are investigating whether the incident was motivated by hate.
Eaton, 48, is accused of confronting and shooting the three students as they walked in front of his apartment building Saturday night conversing in Arabic and English, according to Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad. Two of the men were also wearing traditional Palestinian headscarves known as keffiyehs at the time of the attack, he said.
The victims’ families and several civil rights groups have asked investigators to treat the case as a hate crime, but police and prosecutors said Monday they have not yet uncovered enough evidence to establish Eaton’s motive.
“This was absolutely an act of hate,” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad told CNN on Monday. “But whether or not we can cross the legal threshold to determine that this is a hate crime is a different matter.”
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The other two victims were identified by family representatives as Kinnan Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, a student at Trinity College in Connecticut.
In addition to Awartani’s life-altering spinal cord injury, the other two men were shot in the upper torso and lower extremities and were hospitalized in the ICU, according to police. One of the victims was released from the hospital on Monday, a source close to the victims’ families told CNN.
The victims’ families said in a statement Monday that they were relieved that a suspect had been arrested, but reiterated their confidence that the attack was motivated by hate.
“We believe that a full investigation will likely show that our children were violently attacked simply for being Palestinian,” the families’ statement said. “Full justice and accountability are important and necessary to ensure that this type of brutal and violent attack Do not happen once more”.
The students were visiting Burlington for the Thanksgiving holiday and were staying with Awartani’s uncle, Rich Price, the uncle told CNN. They had attended a birthday party for the uncle’s eight-year-old twin sons just hours before they were attacked, he said.
“We had just gotten back from the birthday party and decided to take a walk around the block to get some fresh air,” Rich Price said. “They were just walking, talking to each other. “They were wearing their keffiyehs, which are traditional Palestinian scarves, and this gentleman came out of the darkness, pulled out a gun, and fired four times.”
Price noted that the three students grew up in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank. “They grew up under military occupation and who would imagine that they would come to a place like this to celebrate Thanksgiving and then their lives would be at risk.”
Despite Hawartani’s life-changing injury, his “spirit is high,” his mother said. She said she will travel from the West Bank to the United States to see her son, who is expected to stay in the hospital for another month, she said.
“I want to take care of him as a mother,” she said. “I just want to be there to reassure him and give him the comfort he needs as he goes through this difficult transition in his life.”
— CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Laura Coates, Rob Frehse, Polo Sandoval, Celina Tebor, Laura Dolan and Mark Morales contributed to this report.
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