Vermont man found guilty of attempted murder in 2023 shooting of 3 Palestinian students
Defence lawyers failed to convince a jury that Jason Eaton, 51, was not sane at time of shooting
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Eaton → find → shooting
A jury on Monday convicted a Vermont man of attempted murder in the shootings of three Palestinian college students who were walking near his home, rejecting an insanity defence rooted in his claims that he was acting on orders from U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies.
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he → convict → agencies
Jason Eaton faces up to life in prison in the November 2023 attack in Burlington, which paralyzed Hisham Awartani from the waist down and wounded his friends, Tahseen Aliahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid.
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which → face → friends
The jury deliberated for several hours before reaching its verdict after a weeklong trial that saw testimony from the three men, who recounted how their stroll ended in bloodshed, and defence and prosecution psychiatric experts who offered differing views of Eaton's mental health and criminal culpability.
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who → deliberate → health
Eaton, 51, did not testify in his own defence.
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Eaton → testify → defence
He stared ahead blankly as the verdict was read, standing alongside his lawyers — public defenders whom he tried to fire last week over his concerns that his defence hadn't been "adequately presented."
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defence → star → concerns
Judge John Pacht, who blocked Eaton's midtrial bid to act as his own lawyer, ordered him jailed pending sentencing, which has yet to be scheduled.
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which → block → sentencing
Awartani and Aliahmad watched from the front row of the courtroom gallery, smiling and hugging people around them.
"The verdict cannot undo what happened or erase the trauma our families still carry, but it affirms something fundamental: Jason Eaton is responsible for what he did," Awartani's mother, Elizabeth Price, told reporters afterward.
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mother → watch → reporters
Shooter had recently lost job
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Shooter → lose → job
The men, all 20 at the time, had been visiting Awartani's grandmother for Thanksgiving.
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all → visit → Thanksgiving
They were smoking cigarettes and speaking a mix of English and Arabic as they walked near the University of Vermont campus after dusk.
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they → smoke → dusk
Two of them were wearing traditional Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs.
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Two → wear → keffiyehs
Eaton had pleaded not guilty but did not dispute that he was the shooter.
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he → plead → ?
He claimed that the CIA and Mossad transmitted their orders via FM radio and that God was commanding him to protect his Jewish neighbours.
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God → claim → neighbours
His lawyers had urged jurors to find him not guilty by reason of insanity, an outcome that would've spared him from prison but could have required that he undergo mental health treatment.
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he → urge → treatment
Eaton's lawyers, Margaret Jansch and Joshua O'Hara, said he had struggled with mental health issues his whole life, including diagnoses of attention deficit, post-traumatic stress, bipolar, depression and borderline personality disorders, culminating in a psychotic break after losing his job at a credit union two weeks before the shooting.
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he → say → shooting
O'Hara told jurors that Eaton claimed he started receiving messages while listening to a local NPR affiliate.
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he → tell → affiliate
At first, the messages were encouraging and validating, the lawyer said, but subsequent messages turned dark, insisting that Eaton "has to go out and shoot somebody."
Prosecutor Sarah George countered that Eaton was a narcissist but not legally insane.
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Eaton → encourage → somebody
He had a grandiose sense of self-importance and lacked empathy but was fully aware of the criminality of his conduct, George said in a closing argument.
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George → have → argument
He repeatedly asked for a lawyer when approached by police and didn't claim at the time to be hearing messages directing his actions, she said.
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she → ask → actions
Eaton didn't disclose to officers his possession of a Ruger .380-calibre handgun, later found in a bedroom dresser.
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Eaton → disclose → dresser
Crime lab testing concluded it was used in the shooting, said George, the Chittenden County state's attorney.
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George → conclude → shooting
Hate crime charges not filed
The shooting, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, shook Burlington and reverberated in the West Bank, where the three wounded men grew up and became friends as schoolmates in Ramallah before moving to the U.S. for college.
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men → file → college
It spawned calls for a hate crime investigation.
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It → spawn → investigation
Days after the shooting, George said in her closing argument, Eaton had told his lawyers that he wished Awartani's grandmother had warned him that the men were "going to dress up like terrorists" and trek through his neighbourhood.
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men → say → neighbourhood
But no hate crime charges were filed as questions persisted about whether anti-Palestinian animus, an altered mental state or something else had compelled Eaton to open fire.
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animus → file → fire
Awartani testified last week that he first noticed Eaton standing on a porch as they approached the apartment house where he lived.
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he → testify → house
Within seconds, Awartani said, Eaton was off the porch and walking toward them.
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Eaton → say → them
His face was expressionless and he didn't say anything.
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he → say → anything
As Eaton got to about five to 10 feet away, "he pulled out a handgun and started shooting at us," Awartani said.
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Awartani → get → us
Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford College near Philadelphia, said he fled and hid behind another home after seeing Aliahmad fall to the ground.
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Aliahmad → say → ground
He said he only realized later, when he sat down, that he had also been wounded in the right buttock.
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he → say → buttock
Awartani, who was studying at Brown University in Rhode Island at the time, was shot in the chest and the bullet ricocheted off his scapula, causing paraplegia in his spinal cord.
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bullet → study → cord
Aliahmad, who was a student at Trinity College in Connecticut, was struck in the collarbone.
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who → strike → collarbone
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