Jury convicts Vermont man of attempted murder in shooting of 3 Palestinian students

Eaton, 51, stared ahead blankly as the verdict was read, standing alongside his lawyers — public defenders whom he tried to fire last week over his concerns that his defense hadn’t been “adequately presented.” Judge John Pacht, who blocked Eaton’s midtrial bid to act as his own lawyer, ordered him jailed pending sentencing, which has yet to be scheduled.

Awartani and Aliahmad watched from the front row of the courtroom gallery, smiling and hugging people around them.

“The verdict cannot undo what happened or erase the trauma our families still carry, but it affirms something fundamental: Jason Eaton is responsible for what he did,” Awartani’s mother, Elizabeth Price, told reporters afterward.

Eaton claimed he was acting on orders from the CIA and Mossad

Eaton had pleaded not guilty but did not dispute that he was the shooter. He claimed that the CIA and Mossad transmitted their orders via FM radio and that God was commanding him to protect his Jewish neighbors. His lawyers had urged jurors to find him not guilty by reason of insanity, an outcome that would’ve spared him from prison but could have required that he undergo mental health treatment.

Eaton’s lawyers, Margaret Jansch and Joshua O’Hara, said he had struggled with mental health issues his whole life, including diagnoses of attention deficit, post-traumatic stress, bipolar, depression and borderline personality disorders, culminating in a psychotic break after losing his job at a credit union two weeks before the shooting.

Prosecutor Sarah George countered that Eaton was a narcissist but not legally insane. He had a grandiose sense of self-importance and lacked empathy but was fully aware of the criminality of his conduct, George said in a closing argument. He appeared nervous when police arrived at his door, repeatedly asked for a lawyer and hasn’t claimed to have received any other messages directing his actions, she said.

Eaton told officers that he had a shotgun in his apartment, but didn’t disclose that he had other weapons, including a Ruger .380-caliber handgun that was found in a bedroom dresser and that crime lab testing concluded was used in the shooting, said George, the Chittenden County state’s attorney.

Victim’s mother says Eaton should’ve been charged with hate crimes

The shooting, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, shook Burlington, and reverberated in the West Bank, where the three wounded men grew up and became friends as schoolmates in Ramallah before moving to the U.S. for college. It spawned calls for a hate crime investigation.

But no hate crime charges were filed as questions persisted about whether anti-Palestinian animus, an altered mental state or something else had compelled Eaton to open fire. After the verdict, Awartani’s mother said Eaton’s hateful rhetoric, aired at the trial, had made it clear why he targeted her son.

Days after the shooting, George said in her closing argument, Eaton had told his lawyers that he wished Awartani’s grandmother had warned him that the men were “going to dress up like terrorists” and trek through his neighborhood.

“Or see, if grandma had said to them, you know, maybe now’s not a great time to wear that thing on your head,” George said, paraphrasing Eaton’s remarks. “You know, things are a little tense when you’ve got American hostages over in Palestine, and we’re trying to get them back.”

“They were not the words of a man confused about who he shot or why,” Elizabeth Price said. “They were the words a man who saw three young men speaking the language of their childhood and wearing what made them feel closer to their far away families and homes and decided to kill them because of his own prejudices.”

Victims recounted how a peaceful walk ended in bloodshed

Awartani testified last week that he first noticed Eaton standing on a porch as they approached the apartment house where he lived. Within seconds, Awartani said, Eaton was off the porch and walking toward them. His face was expressionless and he didn’t say anything. As Eaton got to about 5 to 10 feet (1.5 to 3 meters) away, “he pulled out a handgun and started shooting at us,” Awartani said.

Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford College near Philadelphia, said he fled and hid behind another home after seeing Aliahmad fall to the ground. He said he only realized later when he sat down that he had also been wounded.

Awartani, who was studying at Brown University in Rhode Island at the time, was shot in the chest and the bullet ricocheted off his scapula, causing paraplegia in his spinal cord. Aliahmad, who was a student at Trinity College in Connecticut, was struck in the collarbone, and Abdalhamid was shot in the right buttock.

Jacob Pyne, who lived in a different apartment in the same house as Eaton, testified that he heard four to six gunshots, followed by footsteps going up the stairs of the apartment house. He said he ran outside and heard two men speaking, one of whom was more vocal and yelling, “I’ve been shot, help me.” He then brought the men blankets and called 911.

Eaton didn’t testify. In an opening statement last week, O’Hara told jurors that Eaton claimed he started receiving messages while listening to a local NPR affiliate. At first, the messages were encouraging and validating, the lawyer said, but subsequent messages turned dark, insisting that Eaton “has to go out and shoot somebody.”

Michael R. Sisak And Amanda Swinhart, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

Jury convicts Vermont man of attempted murder in shooting of 3 Palestinian students

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