The man suspected of shooting three U.S. college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday night has been arrested.
Jason J. Eaton, 48, appeared in court Monday, pleading not guilty to three counts of attempted murder in the second degree. He was held without bail pending a second court hearing in Chittenden County Superior Court.
Eaton was detained Sunday afternoon, when agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives encountered him during a search of the shooting area, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said.
Evidence collected during a search of Eaton’s apartment, which is nearby where the shooting occurred, “gave investigators and prosecutors probable cause to believe that Mr. Eaton perpetrated the shooting,” police said in a statement.
Further details about Eaton’s arrest were not provided, but police said Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger and Murad will hold a press conference on Monday.
The attack that injured the three men around 6:25 p.m. Saturday may have been a hate crime, authorities have said. The FBI in Albany, New York, posted a statement Sunday on X, formerly Twitter, saying the bureau was investigating the shooting with the Burlington Police Department, the ATF and other federal, state and local agencies.
The three, all 20 years old, were walking during a visit to the home of one of the victim’s relatives when they were confronted by a white man with a handgun, police said.
“Without speaking, he discharged at least four rounds from the pistol and is believed to have fled,” Murad said in a statement. “All three victims were struck, two in their torsos and one in the lower extremities.”
The victims are all of Palestinian descent. Two are U.S. citizens and the third is a legal resident. Two of the men were wearing the black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, Murad said. They were also speaking Arabic, according to the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee.
The victims’ families identified them on Sunday as Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed. Awartani is a student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; Abdalhamid is a student at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania; and Ahmed is a student at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Brown University President Christina H. Paxson said Awartani was expected to survive. Haverford College said Abdalhamid was recovering from a gunshot wound at a Burlington hospital. The president of Trinity College said Ahmed was in stable condition at a hospital, NBC News reported.
The victims’ families have called on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation, including treating the triple shooting as a hate crime.
“We will not be comfortable until the shooter is brought to justice. We need to ensure that our children are protected, and this heinous crime is not repeated,” their statement read before the arrest was announced. “No family should ever have to endure this pain and agony.”
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, anti-Arab and anti-Jewish attacks have been on the rise in the U.S. and around the world. Last month, an Illinois landlord was charged with a hate crime after being accused of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old Muslim boy and seriously wounding his mother in Chicago.
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