Obama issues statement, three days after triple-homicide of Muslim family

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama offered his condolences Friday for the shooting death of a family that has prompted international scrutiny as a possible anti-Muslim hate crime.

The president issued a statement three days after the triple homicide in Chapel Hill, N.C.

“No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship,” Obama said.

“Michelle and I offer our condolences to the victims’ loved ones. As we saw with the overwhelming presence at the funeral of these young Americans, we are all one American family.”

The statement came after criticism from abroad. More than 129,000 people shared on Facebook a column on the Al Jazeera website headlined, “Chapel Hill shooting and western media bigotry.” Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had complained about Obama’s silence over what many conclude was a hate crime.

There were, in fact, 135 anti-Muslim hate incidents in the U.S. in 2013, according to the FBI. That’s more than against any religious group except for one — the agency reports 625 anti-Jewish crimes that year.

Relatives of the victims suggest this was another one.

The sister of one victim expressed anger Friday at law enforcement’s characterization of the shooting as the result of a parking dispute. Susanne Barakat said police appeared to have done no investigative work before announcing that hypothesis.

“I think it’s absolutely insulting, insensitive and outrageous,” she told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program Friday.

“I’m not sure who they spoke to, because it took me all of five minutes of talking to his former roommate — who they had not reached out to — to give me details, information, text messages.”

Her brother was 23-year-old dental student Deah Shaddy Barakat, who was raising money to treat Syrian refugees. He was shot and killed this week at home, along with his wife Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her 19-year-old sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

She said they were harassed by their neighbour since they moved into the building. And she added that a friend went to check on the building where the killings occurred and didn’t see a car that day in the visitors’ parking spot — which had been a source of tension between the alleged killer and his neighbours.

“Police have still not reached out to my family,” she said. “To call it a parking dispute when in fact no one was parked in even that visitors’ spot that does not belong to him, is outrageous to me, and it’s insulting, and it trivializes their murders.”

Chapel Hill police say they understand the concerns about the possibility that the crime was hate-motivated. However, a preliminary investigation indicated that it was motivated by an ongoing neighbour dispute over parking, they insist.

Different neighbours have also described being harassed by the alleged killer, Craig Stephen Hicks, about the parking spot outside the building, accusing him of flashing a weapon to intimidate them into letting him claim it for his wife.

One told North Carolina’s News & Observer newspaper that neighbours held a community meeting to discuss his tirades because they had made many people feel unsafe: “He had equal opportunity anger toward a lot of the residents here,” Samantha Maness told the newspaper.

Hicks faces three counts of first-degree murder.

Hicks’ Facebook profile described his loathing of religion; some Muslims have used social media to ask whether atheists should face pressure to denounce the actions, the same way Muslims are asked to following a terrorist attack.

The FBI has opened a parallel inquiry into the crime.