University students held a vigil Sunday night to honor the lives of three Chapel Hill students shot last week in an apartment near campus. The victims have been identified as 23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat, his 21-year-old wife, Yusor Mohammad, and her sister, 19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.
The vigil was held at the Amphitheater and featured six speakers — first-year College student Attiya Latif, second-year College student Lital Firestone, second-year College student VJ Jenkins, second-year College student Yahiya Saad, Engineering graduate student Ahmed Alshareef and University Hospital resident physician Anem Waheed.
Anem, a friend of Barakat, said the three victims were leaders in their community and will be leaders in their deaths, adding that the families of each of the students would not allow their memories to go in vain. As an example of the the students’ leadership and good will, Anem said Barakat had helped raise money for Syrian refugees.
“Deah sought to assist the homeless in Chapel Hill, and he also initiated a fund to help Syrian refugees with a goal of $20,000,” she said. “Now that fund has reached $400,000.”
The six speakers said it was important that an incident like this never occurs again and discussed how unfortunate it was the students had to lose their lives in such a vicious and cruel way. Saad spoke last and shared passages from the Quran.
The vigil was planned by Latif and first-year College student Evelyn Wang, who said they wanted to highlight the lives of the victims and bring greater awareness to some of the societal issues related to the killings. Wang said it was key to demonstrate support for the killed students and for Muslims in the University community.
“It was just so important to show UNC that U.Va. and these places all over the country are rallying together, all in support,” Wang said. “To show people in our own community that this is a community where we will not allow those kinds of things to happen, and to tell Muslim community members that they are safe with us.”
Latif agreed, saying it is important to protect the legacy of the three students and ensure that more than just their names live on.
“We just really wanted to come together as a community and show that we were supporting, that we cared about what had happened,” Latif said. “And we were really disturbed initially by the blatant lack of media coverage, and so we just wanted to show that even though their names may die in the media, their lives would live on and that we would remember them. These were just beautiful people, they were amazing individuals and their legacy is something we can learn from.”
Latif also said she hoped the vigil might serve to reassure members of the community.
“People are scared, people are genuinely terrified, because if this can happen at one university in the South it could happen at any university in the South, and it could happen to any minority,” Latif said. “If there’s anyone whose heart is lightened by this [vigil], whose heart is at ease or anyone who comes out feeling safer because of this, we feel like we’ve done our job.”
Latif said she was amazed by the amount of support the event received and was glad so many people came together to get behind the issue.
“We didn’t expect anything, honestly, and then there was just this amazing outpouring of support,” she said. “Societies and organizations were coming together to rally behind two first years who were unassuming and had no leadership positions.”
University students who attended the vigil said they were horrified by the events at UNC last week and participated in the event to show their support and commemorate the victims’ lives. First-year College student Ali Hall said she felt it was important to hold the vigil and was moved by the number of students who attended.
"It's terrible the fact that something like this happened to three people who shouldn't have been killed just for their religious beliefs," Hall said. "The amount of people who showed up to show solidarity is amazing and shows that our school will not tolerate this."
Second-year Engineering student Keaton Wadzinski — who helped set up the vigil — agreed, saying the event was a rare opportunity for people to constructively consider societal issues.
“I personally have been very interested in engaging people in dialogue for interface relations,” Wadzinski said. “I think a lot of people are interested in having that dialogue but rarely get the opportunity due to the stigmatization around spirituality, faith and religion. I was incredibly impressed at the turnout — for people to come together and appreciate the value of a human life and in particular these three incredibly service-oriented, passionate human beings.”
University President Teresa Sullivan, who attended the vigil, distributed an email on Saturday to the University community describing similar horror at the killings and condemned any religious intolerance which may have played a role in the students’ deaths. Sullivan said religious intolerance leads to a proliferation of violence in the world and that University community must commit itself to promote religious freedom.
“The motive for these murders is not yet clear,” Sullivan said in the email. “If these students were slain because of bias regarding their religious beliefs, then the crime was also a betrayal of American values that are grounded in our nation's founding.”
Sullivan praised the University vigil, saying it would foster a spirit of unity and work to create a caring, tolerant community within Charlottesville and beyond. Among those who attended were Dean of Students Allen Groves, and the Z Society sent its support.
Chapel Hill police have arrested and charged the suspect of the shooting, Craig Stephen Hicks. Chris Blue, chief of the Chapel Hill Police Department, said a team is currently investigating the motive of the crime.
“We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated, and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case,” Blue said in a press release.
Hall said she strongly felt the killing was a hate crime and thought it was unbelievable that it is being viewed as potentially having roots in a parking dispute.
"It's ridiculous that they are investigating whether they were killed over a parking dispute when it's quite obvious they were killed over hate," she said.
Information provided by the womens’ father would suggest there may have been an underlying factor of hatred — he said his daughters had told him numerous times that they had a neighbor who was hateful and concealed a gun in his waistband.
The murders have sparked a nationwide reaction, including the repetition of the phrase “Muslim Lives Matter” on American social media, along with other denunciations of islamophobia and bias against those who practice Islam.
Hicks is being held without bail until his probable cause hearing, currently scheduled for March 4.
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