US man convicted in 2023 shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont

By Al Jazeera Staff and The Associated Press. Published On 21 Sep 202621 Sep 2026.

Key points

• Awartani, Aliahmad and Abdalhamid, now 23, grew up together in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank before moving to the US for university.
• Jason Eaton, 51, faces up to life in prison for the attack near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington.
• When Eaton was regarding five to 10 feet (1.5 to three metres) away, Awartani testified, he pulled out a handgun and began shooting.
• Eaton did not dispute that he shot the three men in November 2023.
• They were visiting Awartani's grandmother in Burlington over the Thanksgiving holiday when they went for a walk near the University of Vermont campus after dark.

For context, a jury in the US state of Vermont has convicted a man of attempted murder for shooting three Palestinian college students in 2023, rejecting his defence that he was not guilty by reason of insanity.

Jason Eaton, 51, faces up to life in prison for the attack near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington. It left Hisham Awartani paralysed from the waist down and wounded his friends Tahseen Aliahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid.

Meanwhile, the jury deliberated for a number of hours on Monday before reaching its verdict after a week-long trial that included testimony from the three men and psychiatric experts called by both the defence and prosecution.

Eaton was ordered jailed pending sentencing. It has yet to be scheduled.

Awartani and Aliahmad, who were sitting in the front row of the courtroom, smiled and hugged individuals around them as the verdict was read.

Eaton did not dispute that he shot the three men in November 2023. Instead, his lawyers argued that he should be discovered not guilty by reason of insanity.

For context, the defence remarked Eaton was suffering from a delusional psychotic disorder and believed the CIA and Israel's Mossad were transmitting messages to him through FM radio.

Joshua O'Hara, the supervising attorney at the Chittenden County Public Defender Office, informed jurors that Eaton believed the intelligence agencies had enlisted him to "overwatch duty" to protect a Jewish family living throughout the street and that God was commanding him to act.

Prosecutors rejected the insanity defence, telling jurors that a state psychiatrist had concluded Eaton did not have a mental disease or defect and that the evidence indicated he intended to kill the three men. 'He pulled out a handgun and began shooting'.

Awartani testified that the friends were smoking cigarettes and speaking a mix of English and Arabic. Two of them were wearing keffiyehs.

He remarked Eaton was standing on the porch of the apartment building where he lived before approaching the friends without saying anything.

Awartani, then a student at Brown University, was shot in the chest and left paralysed from the waist down. While Abdalhamid, a Haverford College student, was shot in the right buttock, aliahmad, who attended Trinity College, was shot in the collarbone.

In practice, the shooting prompted calls for a hate crime investigation, but no hate crime charges were filed.

Police afterwards identified three shotguns in Eaton's apartment as well as a Ruger.380-calibre handgun that crime laboratory testing identified as the weapon applied in the shooting.

In short, US man convicted in 2023 shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.