Chapel Hill shooting kills three Muslim students — federal hate crime investigation opened, charges declined

On February 10, 2015, Craig Stephen Hicks shot and killed three young Muslim Americans — Deah Shaddy Barakat (23), his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha (21), and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha (19) — at their apartment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Hicks, 46, turned himself in after the shooting. Chapel Hill Police initially classified the attack as motivated by a parking dispute with neighbors, a framing that sparked immediate national outrage from Muslim American communities and civil rights groups. On February 13, 2015, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the DOJ opened a hate crime investigation. Federal authorities ultimately declined to bring hate crime charges, citing insufficient evidence of religious motivation under the federal standard. Hicks pleaded guilty in 2019 and received three consecutive life sentences on first-degree murder charges — but not as a federally classified hate crime.