Three students killed in Chapel Hill Shooting

Hours after three college students were murdered near the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus, a number of people began to notice something.

Though the three students had been Muslim, which to many suggested the killings were religiously motivated (possibly supported by as-yet-unconfirmed Facebook posts by the man who turned himself in for the murders), there seemed to be remarkably little media attention.

Three college students — Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha — were shot and killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Tuesday night. Because the students were Muslim, speculation has turned to religion as a possible motivation. After the killing, Twitter users discovered a heartbreaking tweet, from just weeks before, from an account that appeared to be Deah Barakat’s:

The tweet has struck a chord, particularly among Twitter users who believe Barakat’s death may have been motivated by religious hatred. That Barakat himself may have expressed a fundamental commitment to peace and tolerance just weeks before being murdered in a potential hate crime is crushing.