Qualla: 2015 Chapel Hill Shooting

2015 Chapel Hill Shooting: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 4.0. Their names were Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and her younger sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Deah was 23, a UNC School of Dentistry student raising money for Syrian refugee dental care. Yusor was 21, a recent NC State graduate who had been accepted into UNC dentistry alongside her husband. Razan was 19, an NC State architecture student visiting them for dinner. On the early evening of February 10, 2015, their neighbor at the Finley Forest apartment complex in Chapel Hill - a 46-year-old man named Craig Stephen Hicks - walked into their unit at 8 Summerwalk Circle and shot all three of them in the head at close range. Their family, the local Muslim community, and the prosecutors who put him away for life would call it what it was: an anti-Muslim hate killing.

Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 4.0

2015 Chapel Hill Shooting: Three Lives

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 4.0. Deah and Yusor had been married for just over a month. Their wedding had been a December celebration that brought together two families with deep ties to North Carolina Muslim communities. Deah ran a fundraising drive called Refugee Smiles to provide dental care for Syrian childr...

Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 4.0

2015 Chapel Hill Shooting: The Killing

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zeke Smith from Chapel Hill, NC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Hicks lived next door. Neighbors later described him as obsessed with parking spaces and noise complaints, prone to confronting residents with a pistol visible on his hip. He had a documented pattern of conflict at the complex - but he had not, before that evening, ever drawn a g...

Image: Zeke Smith from Chapel Hill, NC, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

2015 Chapel Hill Shooting: 'Parking Dispute' and Pushback

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Initial statements from Chapel Hill police suggested that an ongoing parking dispute had triggered the killing. The Barakat and Abu-Salha families rejected that framing publicly and immediately. Yusor's father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, told reporters his daughter had felt threaten...

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

2015 Chapel Hill Shooting: International Response and the Final Plea

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Voice of America, Public domain. Governments and leaders of several Muslim-majority countries publicly called the shooting an act of terrorism, among them Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Moza bint Nasser, the mother o...

Image: Voice of America | Public domain