If his Facebook page is any indication, Craig Hicks doesn’t hate Muslims. An avowed atheist, his online posts instead depict a man who despises religion itself, but nevertheless seems to support an individual’s right to his own beliefs.
“I hate Islam just as much as christianity, but they have the right to worship in this country just as much as any others do,” the man now accused of killing three Muslim college students stated in one 2012 post over the proposed construction of a mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York.
Days after the shooting deaths of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, a nuanced and sometimes contradictory portrait is emerging of the man charged in their slayings.
Police in Chapel Hill said they have yet to uncover any evidence that Hicks, 46, allegedly acted out of religious animus, though they are investigating the possibility. As a potential motive, they cited a dispute over parking spaces at the condo community where Hicks and two of the victims lived.
Hicks’ court-appointed lawyer, Stephen Freedman, said he could not comment on the case. Hicks was being held without bond.
In often publicly posted Facebook rants, Hicks was brazen about his disdain for all faiths. In one post regarding specific texts from the Quran, the Jewish Talmud and the Bible about battling nonbelievers, he wrote: “I wish they would exterminate each other!”
But he was just as passionate about personal freedom and liberty — championing an individual’s right to worship or not worship, legal abortion and gay marriage and, perhaps most fervently, the right to own and bear arms. If he has a creed, it’s the Second Amendment.
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One of the victim’s fathers, Namee Barakat, told the AP that Hicks also had visited his son’s condo previously, flashing his gun as he demanded they stop using visitors’ parking spots.
On Monday, Hicks posted a precious video link with his Facebook friends. The clip showed a dachshund puppy, repeatedly dinging a small silver bell with its paw to receive a treat.
“A different take on Pavlov!” he wrote, referring to the famous psychological experiment. “The cutest thing you have seen all day!!”
It was his last post. The following day, according to police, Hicks walked around to the backside of his condo building, entered his neighbors’ home and, their friends and family believe, made martyrs of the three young Muslims.
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Associated Press reporters Jonathan Drew and Emery Dalesio contributed to this report.
