Palestinian students Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali, and Kenan Abdulhamid pose for a photograph. AFP

Gulf Today Report

US police confirmed on Monday that they had arrested a suspect in the shooting of three 20-year-old Palestinian university students in Burlington, Vermont.

Police identified Jason J. Eaton, 48, as the suspect and he was arrested on Sunday afternoon at the scene of the shooting, according to a news release from the Burlington Police Department.

Eaton is expected to be charged on Monday, police said.

Three university students from the Palestinian territories were shot in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday, according to their former school in the occupied West Bank.

Burlington Police Chief John Murad said in a news release that officers responded to a call and found two shooting victims, with a third a short distance away, all close to the University of Vermont campus.

The victims were transported to the University of Vermont Medical Center, the press release stated.

Murad said that the identity of the shooter or shooters has not been identified or arrested, and that the police department is “in the early stages of investigating this crime.”

The three students graduated from Ramallah Friends School, a private, non-profit school run by the Quaker Foundation in Ramallah, according to the school.

The school identified the students in a Facebook post as Hisham Awartani, Kanan Abdel Hamid, and Tahseen Ahmed.

According to the Ramallah Friends School, the three students are in American colleges, and Haverford College in Pennsylvania confirmed in a statement that Abdul Hamid, a first-year student at the college, is recovering from gunshot wounds in the hospital.

Hussam Zamlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, posted on the X website about the incident, mentioning the names of the students and identifying them as “three Palestinian young men.”

Zamlot added on the X website: “Hate crimes against Palestinians must stop. Palestinians everywhere need protection.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations also announced shortly after the incident that it was offering a reward of $10,000 to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator or perpetrators of the crime.