Law enforcement authorities, in Burlington, Vermont, have arrested a suspect in the shooting of three students of Palestinian descent that the city’s mayor said was being investigated as a possible hate crime.
The suspect was expected be arraigned today in connection with the shooting of the students, three men in their 20s who attend American universities.
They were shot and wounded on Saturday by a white man with a handgun while they were walking near the University of Vermont, the police said. Two of the victims were wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs, a traditional headdress.
Two of the victims were in stable condition, the authorities said. The third sustained much more serious injuries.
The federal government opened discrimination investigations earlier this month at half a dozen universities following complaints about anti-Muslim and antisemitic harassment.
Since the start of the war on October 7th, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has also opened inquiries into Wellesley College in Massachusetts, the University of Pennsylvania and Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, along with a K-12 school district, Maize Unified in Kansas.
Last week, the federal government opened discrimination investigations into half a dozen universities, including Columbia, Cooper Union and Cornell in New York.
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