A jury in Vermont has found Jason Eaton, 51, guilty of attempted murder for the November 2023 shooting of three Palestinian college students near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington. The verdict rejected Eaton’s defense argument that he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Eaton now faces a potential life sentence. He was ordered held in custody pending sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled.
The attack left Hisham Awartani paralyzed from the waist down. His friends, Tahseen Aliahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid, were also wounded during the incident.
During the week-long trial, which concluded with jury deliberations lasting several hours on Monday, testimony was provided by all three victims as well as psychiatric experts called by both the prosecution and the defense.
Eaton did not contest the fact that he opened fire on the group. However, his legal team argued that he suffered from a delusional psychotic disorder. Joshua O’Hara, supervising attorney at the Chittenden County Public Defender Office, stated that Eaton believed the CIA and Israel’s Mossad were transmitting messages to him via FM radio.
O’Hara told jurors that Eaton believed intelligence agencies had assigned him to “overwatch duty” to protect a Jewish family living across the street and that he was acting under divine command.
Prosecutors opposed the insanity plea, citing a state psychiatrist who concluded Eaton did not suffer from a mental disease or defect. They argued the evidence demonstrated his intent to kill the three men.
The three victims, now 23, grew up together in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank before moving to the United States for their studies. They were visiting Awartani’s grandmother in Burlington over the Thanksgiving holiday when the shooting occurred.
Awartani testified that the group was walking near the university campus after dark. He described Eaton as standing on the porch of an apartment building before approaching the friends silently.
According to Awartani’s testimony, when Eaton was between five and 10 feet away, he drew a handgun and began shooting. Awartani, a Brown University student at the time, was hit in the chest. Aliahmad, attending Trinity College, was struck in the collarbone, while Abdalhamid, a Haverford College student, was shot in the right buttock.
Although the shooting prompted calls for a hate crime investigation, no hate crime charges were filed. Police subsequently discovered a Ruger .380-caliber handgun in Eaton’s apartment, which crime laboratory testing confirmed was the weapon used in the attack, along with three shotguns.
The sanity verdict was expected, but the lack of hate crime charges feels like a missed opportunity for justice.
I wonder if this will spark more conversations about anti-Palestinian bias in the US right now.
Delusional psychosis? That sounds like a convenient excuse to avoid full responsibility for a brutal attack.
Why weren’t hate crime charges filed? The victims were targeted because of their identity, surely?
This is horrifying. A life changed forever over Thanksgiving. The paralysis details are heartbreaking.