Four years after he was charged with killing three Muslim students, a North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to the slayings.
“I’ve wanted to plead guilty since day one,” 50-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks told the judge at a Wednesday court appearance filled with family and friends of the victims.
Hicks agreed to plead guilty to three counts of first-degree murder after the district attorney decided to end plans to pursue the death penalty in the case. As part of the plea bargain, Hicks agreed to accept three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Police say that in February 2015, Hicks broke into a condo in Chapel Hill and shot 23-year-old dental student Deah Barakat, Barakat’s wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, 19-year-old Razan Abu-Salha.
Like her husband, Abu-Salha had recently been accepted into dental school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Razan was a student at North Carolina State University.
Police in Chapel Hill said that Hicks, who lived in the same condominium complex, shot the three over a dispute about parking spaces. Despite that, family of the victims have said they believe the shooting to be a hate crime.
“Three beautiful young Americans were brutally murdered and there is no question in our minds that this tragedy was born of bigotry and hate,” Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, Yusor Abu-Salha’s father, said before the House Judiciary Committee in April.
In court Wednesday, prosecutor Kendra Montgomery-Blinn called Hicks “an angry and bitter man.”
