On February 10, 2015, Chapel Hill resident Craig Hicks knocked on the condominium door belonging to his neighbors Deah Shaddy Barakat and Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, who were eating an early dinner with Yusor’s sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Using a .357-caliber gun, Hicks opened fire, killing Barakat with a spray of bullets and murdering the Abu-Salha sisters execution style.
For months, Hicks had been harassing the three students—Barakat, 23, was in dentistry school at UNC-Chapel Hill; Yusor, 21, was a prospective dental school student at NC State University; and Razan, 19, was an NCSU undergraduate—who were all observant Muslims. Soon after the crime occurred, Chapel Hill police issued a statement declaring the triple homicide the result of a parking lot dispute.
This massacre, and the fight to charge Hicks with a felony hate crime, is the subject of a wrenching new documentary, 36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime, from director Tarek Albaba and executive producers Sean Dash and Omar Altalib. The documentary will screen in the Triangle three times this month; a February 12 screening in Durham includes a panel discussion with Durham County Board of Commissioners chair Nida Allam and Durham district attorney Satana Deberry.
Albaba, who is Palestinian American and grew up in Charlotte, worked on 36 Seconds for eight years. It was a big project, one of its more haunting aspects being how much archival material Albaba had to work with: in abundant photos and videos, it is evident how beloved the three victims were, how happily normal the lives they’d built were, brimming with basketball and sweet tea, purpose and success.
Deah and Yusor were newlyweds, and joyful footage from their December wedding was still fresh when the massacre took place. Yusor, in fact, had recorded a StoryCorps interview just months before: “Growing up in America has been such a blessing. And although in some ways I do stand out, such as the hijab I wear on my head … there are still so many ways that I feel so embedded in the fabric that is, you know, our culture.”
“That’s the beautiful thing here,” she concluded, “it doesn’t matter where you come from.”
During a year where xenophobia, Islamophobia, and racism are spiking, 36 Seconds is particularly illuminating when contextualized in the language of the present moment. In reports about the genocide in Gaza, the media often employs passive double-speak: they describe Palestinians who are killed as having “died,” for instance, while Israeli attacks are “explosions,” as if massacres are wrung from thin air.
“Right now, it doesn’t feel like we qualify as human. We’re seeing insane hate crime violence—I mean, a six-year-old stabbed to death, three Palestinian students being shot at point-blank range,” Albaba tells the INDY. “I hoped it would get better. I was idealistic. You look at the crime in 2015 and you see these patterns and you see how it intersects with the parallel of the election cycle, and we have a tumultuous election cycle ahead of us. We’re seeing that spike in hate crimes again, as Arab Americans, and that feeling post-9/11.”
At the time of the Chapel Hill massacre, Craig Hicks, an unemployed former auto parts salesman, had a reputation for expressing both neighborly antagonism and a passionate antireligious stance.
The victims had tried to appease Hicks, in the preceding months, and the night of the murders, when Hicks staked them out—walking into his apartment to get his gun, maneuvering through Deah and Yusor’s gate, knocking on their door—their cars were parked in the condominium-approved spots. Nevertheless, when Hicks turned himself in that night—footage of Hicks speaking cozily with police during those hours is particularly chilling—a parking lot dispute is the explanation he offered police. They accepted it and that narrative took root.
The local tragedy immediately made waves: Vigils were held around the globe; President Barack Obama issued a statement (“No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship”); New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot reported a long-form story on it; and prominent figures like comedian Hasan Minhaj raised awareness. (Both Talbot and Minhaj participate in 36 Seconds.)
And the Barakat and Abu-Salha families—in particular, Deah’s older sister, Suzanne Barakat, who also features prominently in the documentary—doggedly, and with great dignity, pursued justice, speaking up for the memory of Deah, Yusor, and Razan.
“We need to be honest about what happened,” Albaba says, speaking to the difficulties of securing a hate crime charge, particularly in North Carolina, where hate crime laws are particularly weak and are only classified as a misdemeanor. “How are you ever going to wrap your hands around a problem if you don’t know it exists? It needs to be on record.”
In the end, Hicks was sentenced to life in prison and the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to pursue felony hate crime charges, with local U.S. attorney Ripley Rand stating that there was “no additional punishment [Hicks] could have gotten that would have meant anything.”
Of course, though, that is a version of justice that puts Hicks at center. To the families of the victims, a hate crime charge would have meant a great deal. Even years later, that initial debasing explanation, hastily slapped onto a triple homicide, has left a mark, the culturally atomized word “dispute” forming an impression, faint but just distinct enough, of petty mutual responsibility.
A dispute takes place between two aggrieved parties. A hate crime is systemic; it indicts a perpetrator and implicates the culture that shaped that perpetrator. It’s only becoming clearer that this culture has thrown its weight behind that hateful shape.
Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Twitter or send an email to [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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