#ChapelHillShooting Craig Stephen Hicks charged with 1st degree murder #ISLAMOPHOBIA #MuslimLivesMatter

Chapel Hill man arrested after 3 people shot dead ~ TAMMY GRUBB, tgrubb@newsobserver.com February 10, 2015.

CHAPEL HILL — Three people were shot dead Tuesday evening in a quiet neighborhood near the Friday Center/Finley Golf Course just south of busy N.C. 54.

Police officers responded to a report of gunshots on Summerwalk Circle at 5:15 p.m. Chapel Hill police found three people – Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, from Chapel Hill; Yusor Mohammad, 21, from Chapel Hill; and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, from Raleigh – who police said were all pronounced dead at the scene.

“The Chapel Hill Police Department is questioning a person of interest in the crime and has reason to believe that there is no ongoing threat to the public,” according to a department news release.

Overnight, another police department news release said Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, of Chapel Hill was arrested and charged with 3 counts of first-degree murder. He is being held in the Durham County Jail, according to the news release. Bail information was not immediately available.

The neighborhood, not far from the Meadowmont Village community, is mostly rental apartments and modest townhouses. It rarely appears in reports of crime in Chapel Hill.

A group of seven or eight young people who appeared to be in their 20s arrived in the area about two hours after the shooting. They sat on the curb at the corner of Summerwalk and Springberry Lane near a parked patrol car.

One young man who did not identify himself said he thought his brother might have been one of the victims. He had been trying to reach his brother and two others in the Finley Forest subdivision without success.

The young man’s mother arrived about 7:45 p.m. She was crying, asking officers to at least let them know who was involved. An officer said they did not have that information yet. A police crisis counselor took the mother and the man’s father aside to talk.

The father returned to the group a short time later, walked up to police officers and demanded to know whether his son had been shot.

He tried to walk toward his son’s apartment about two blocks away. A group of officers stepped in front of him and told him not to go there. He tried to go around them, and the officers stepped in front of him again.

Late Tuesday, police were talking with members of the family in the neighborhood’s clubhouse, but they declined to give details of the discussion or whether they answered the question the mother and father had raised earlier.

The investigation is continuing, and more information will be released when it becomes available, police said.

Grubb: 919-932-8746

Chapel Hill police officers investigate the shooting scene near Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill on Tuesday. Police responded to reports of gunshots at 5:15 p.m. AL DRAGO

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ALSO SEE:
Three young Muslims shot dead in their home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina ~ THE INDEPENDENT.