US Man Convicted of Attempted Murder in 2023 Shooting of Three Palestinian Students in Vermont

A jury in Vermont has convicted 51-year-old Jason Eaton of attempted murder for shooting three Palestinian college students in Burlington in November 2023. The verdict follows a week-long trial that concluded after several hours of jury deliberations, rejecting the defendant's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Eaton now faces a potential sentence of up to life in prison and remains jailed pending a sentencing hearing that has not yet been scheduled.

The attack took place near the University of Vermont campus while the victims—Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Aliahmad, and Kinnan Abdalhamid—were visiting Awartani's grandmother over the Thanksgiving holiday. The three men, who grew up together in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and were attending US universities, were walking after dark, speaking a mix of English and Arabic, and wearing keffiyehs when the shooting occurred. Awartani testified during the trial that Eaton approached them without speaking from the porch of his apartment building and opened fire from a distance of five to ten feet.

The shooting left Awartani, then a student at Brown University, shot in the chest and paralysed from the waist down. Aliahmad, attending Trinity College, was wounded in the collarbone, and Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford College, was shot in the right buttock. Now 23 years old, Awartani and Aliahmad were present in the courtroom, sitting in the front row and hugging supporters when the verdict was delivered.

Throughout the proceedings, the defense did not contest that Eaton carried out the shooting. Instead, defense attorneys argued that Eaton lacked criminal responsibility due to a mental disease. Joshua O'Hara, a supervising attorney at the Chittenden County Public Defender Office, presented evidence that Eaton suffered from a delusional psychotic disorder. According to the defense, Eaton believed that the CIA and Israel's Mossad were communicating with him via FM radio, that he had been assigned to protect a neighboring Jewish family, and that divine commands compelled him to act.

Prosecutors countered the insanity claim by presenting testimony from a state psychiatrist who concluded that Eaton did not suffer from a qualifying mental disease or defect. The state argued that the physical evidence and the nature of the attack demonstrated a clear intent to kill. Psychiatric experts from both sides testified during the legal proceedings before the case went to the jury.

In the aftermath of the 2023 attack, the incident drew widespread attention and prompted urgent calls from community advocates and officials for a hate crime investigation. While police ultimately recovered three shotguns and a Ruger .380-calibre handgun from Eaton's apartment—with forensic testing identifying the handgun as the weapon used in the shooting—federal and local prosecutors did not pursue hate crime charges in the case.

The trial brought closure to a legal process that began shortly after the late-November shooting. With the jury's rejection of the insanity defense and the resulting attempted murder convictions, the case moves toward a final sentencing phase where Eaton faces the maximum penalty of life imprisonment.