Vermont shooting suspect: Details of arrest emerge, motive unclear

Nov. 27, 2023 Updated 3:05 PM PT

When a federal agent knocked on the door of apartment No. 6 at 69 N. Prospect St. in Burlington, Vt., a tall, thin man with a beard and goatee stepped out into the hallway with his hands by his waist, palms up. From inside came the sound of a television.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Jason Eaton told the officer, according to court documents released Monday. He appeared nervous.

“Why’s that?” a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives asked. Other federal agents and local police were canvassing the area and the building.

Eaton requested a lawyer.

Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday afternoon in connection with the shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent the night before, leaving at least one of the men in serious condition. He pleaded not guilty Monday morning to three counts of attempted murder.

Police have not yet declared a motive, but the case is being investigated as a possible hate crime, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said.

“There is more investigation to be done, and that includes trying to determine motive,” Murad said at a news conference Monday morning. “We still do not know as much as we want to know.”

The shooting comes amid a pause in fighting nearly two months into the Israel-Hamas war, as Jewish, Palestinian and Arab communities in the U.S. remain on high alert amid a surge in reported hate crimes against the groups. At times, the tension has erupted into violence, including the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian boy in a Chicago suburb in what was described by authorities as a hate crime, as well as manslaughter and battery charges in the death of a 69-year-old Jewish man who suffered a head injury at a Thousand Oaks protest.

“We could see decade highs in anti-Muslim hate crime and possible records in anti-Jewish hate crimes after final data comes in,” said Brian Levin, who ran the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino until last month. “Since the outbreak of the [Israel-Hamas] war, across North America and in California in particular there has been a precipitous rise in anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and [anti-Arab] hate crimes reported to police that is both diverse by offense and often public and brazen.”

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger called the shooting “one of the most shocking and disturbing events in this city’s history.”

“This horrific unprovoked attack was a tragic violation of the values and character of this welcoming, inclusive community,” Weinberger said.

President Biden offered his condolences as federal law enforcement partners continued to investigate the shooting alongside Burlington police.

“While we are waiting for more facts, we know this: There is absolutely no place for violence or hate in America. Period,” Biden said in a statement. “No person should worry about being shot at while going about their daily lives. And far too many Americans know a family member injured or killed as a result of gun violence. We cannot and we will not accept that.”

Though the investigation is in its early stages, an affidavit provided by the Burlington Police Department and released by the Vermont judiciary outlined events that led to the shooting of the three students and the search for a suspect.

Three young men wearing keffiyeh scarves

Kinnan Abdalhamid, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Hisham Awartani, all 20, had been in Burlington since the day before Thanksgiving and were staying at Awartani’s grandmother’s house on North Prospect Street, they told police in interviews after the shooting. On Saturday, they went for a walk after going bowling for Awartani’s 8-year-old cousin’s birthday, and they were smoking cigarettes and chatting in a mixture of English and Arabic, according to the affidavit. Ali Ahmad and Awartani were wearing keffiyehs, traditional Palestinian headscarves.

Outside a white house, Awartani said, a man walked up to them, pulled a handgun and started shooting when he was about six feet away, according to the affidavit. Awartani and Ali Ahmad fell to the ground screaming, and Awartani called 911, according to the documents. Ali Ahmad was shot in the chest, and Awartani was hit in the spine. A man emerged from the white house and, after learning they’d been shot, brought out blankets.

Abdalhamid said the gunman, whom he had never seen before, had been staring at them before opening fire, according to the affidavit. The man stumbled down the stairs of the white house in a way that Abdalhamid described to police as “wonky.”

Unlike the other two students, Abdalhamid was able to run away and only realized he had been shot through his backside after he jumped a fence and knocked on a resident’s door, begging them to call 911, the document says.

Police and federal agents from the ATF and FBI converged on the crime scene and immediately began searching, according to the affidavit.

Armed officers swept the apartment building Saturday but at the time didn’t have the legal authority to enter any units, Murad said at Monday’s news conference. Additionally, at least one witness said the shooter fled the scene.

When agents returned Sunday, Eaton refused to talk further after telling them he had been waiting, though he did admit that he had a shotgun in the apartment, according to the affidavit. He requested a lawyer repeatedly, declined to say whether any other guns were inside and would not identify himself, according to the affidavit.

Police called the landlord of the building, who identified Eaton as the sole occupant.

Authorities secured a search warrant and found a Ruger .380 LCP pistol in the apartment loaded with rounds that matched an intact bullet found at the scene of the shooting, according to the affidavit. They also found a Savage 20-gauge shotgun and a Savage .22-caliber rifle as well as ammunition for the guns, the affidavit said.

Weapon and ammunition next to an evidence marker

Eaton is being held without bail at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton, about 35 miles north of Burlington. A bail hearing is pending.

At the news conference Monday, Murad said Eaton had only recently arrived in Burlington and came from the Syracuse area. Eaton had one local traffic violation, and authorities were working to see whether he has previous records elsewhere, Murad said.

Eaton acquired the gun legally months before the shooting from a federally licensed dealer in Vermont, Murad said, adding that there were no flags on the purchase.

In the last few years, authorities said, gun violence has increased dramatically in Burlington, a progressive city of about 45,000 people on the shores of Lake Champlain and home to several colleges. In 2022, the city recorded 26 gunfire incidents, Murad said, up from about two per year previously. There have been at least a dozen shootings in Burlington so far this year, Murad said.

The victims’ families fear they were targeted because they are Arab and were wearing keffiyehs, according to Richard Price, Awartani’s uncle. “We believe in the sanctity of the presumption of innocence and due process,” he said. “We’ll support the authorities as they go through their investigation, but it certainly seems like that’s our fear.”

Successfully prosecuting a hate crime enhancement requires “direct and great evidence” that proves malicious motivation beyond a reasonable doubt, Sarah George, the state’s attorney for Chittenden County, said Monday. The enhancement can serve as an aggravating factor at sentencing, though with or without it Eaton faces 20 years to life in prison.

“Although we don’t yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement, I do want to be clear that there is no question this was a hateful act,” George said.

Radi Tamimi, Abdalhamid’s uncle, said his nephew’s family shares the same fears. “Hard to imagine in this time and with everything that’s happening that it was just a random act,” said Tamimi, who flew in from California on Monday. “It doesn’t feel that way. But we are absolutely willing to wait to [let] the due process take its course.”

“We welcome the arrest of a suspect in this shooting, and we encourage law enforcement to file state and federal hate crime charges if the evidence confirms that anti-Palestinian racism motivated this attack,” said Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The police said they did not have any information on Eaton’s religious background.

Mary Reed, Eaton’s mother, told the the Daily Beast that Eaton suffered from depression and mental health struggles in the past but seemed happy on Thanksgiving.

“I just don’t understand,” she said. “I can’t believe he would do something like this.”

Eaton’s sister declined to comment on the situation to The Times.

All three victims were in the intensive care unit at the University of Vermont Medical Center on Monday.

Awartani suffered a spinal cord injury and faces a long recovery, Price said. Ali Ahmad was still in “quite a lot of pain,” he said, and Abdalhamid was expected to make a “full and speedy recovery.”

Times staff writers David Zahniser, Emily Alpert Reyes and Daniel Miller contributed to this report.