Vermont Court Convicts Jason Eaton of Attempted Murder in 2023 Shooting

A Vermont court convicted Jason Eaton on Monday of the attempted murder of three Palestinian-American college students in November 2023. The shooting, which left one of the young men paralyzed, occurred while the three were spending the Thanksgiving holiday. Sentencing will be handed down at a later date.

The incident took place on November 25, 2023, in the city of Burlington. Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali Ahmad, and Kinnan Abdalhamid were walking through the city streets during a visit to Awartani's grandmother. The three, who grew up in the West Bank, were wearing black-and-white keffiyehs and speaking English and Arabic. Eaton approached them and opened fire. Ali Ahmad was hit in the chest, and Abdalhamid was shot in the lower back while trying to escape. Awartani was also shot in the chest and remains paralyzed from the chest down.

During the trial, Eaton did not deny being the shooter. His defense team argued that he should not be convicted due to insanity, claiming he acted on radio wave instructions from U.S. and Israeli intelligence and that God asked him to protect his Jewish neighbors. The jury rejected these arguments and convicted him on three counts of attempted second-degree murder.

Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George noted that Eaton faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment without parole, with a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison on each count. The students' families issued a joint statement saying, "Justice has been served, we feel a sense of relief."

The incident occurred against the backdrop of a surge in reported hate crimes in the United States since the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023. Other notable cases include the murder of a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy in Illinois and a shooting incident at a mosque in San Diego earlier this year that claimed five lives.