Newlyweds who filmed their own murder
How could a row over a parking space lead to a brutal triple murder?
Most people who encountered Craig Hicks, 49, could sense the anger bubbling away inside him. Unemployed and disgruntled, he constantly seethed about everything. He openly hated all religions, posting rants on his social media.
And he loathed perceived rule breakers, regularly confronting neighbours for making too much noise. And his pet hate? Taking up more than the allotted car-parking spaces at the block of flats where he lived. People living near him in the quiet building in North Carolina, USA, said he was always confrontational.
‘Any time that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry,’ said his neighbour Samantha Maness.
Carrying a handgun on his hip, Hicks always made sure people could see it.
‘You guys need to not park here,’ he’d bark, flashing his firearm.
A two-time divorcee, Hicks lived with his third wife in a first-floor flat.
After angrily quitting his job as a car-parts salesman, he’d started studying to be a paralegal at a local college.
Other than that, his main interest seemed to be keeping records of his neighbours’ parking activities.
That, and constantly playing violent sniper games on his computer.
He was also fixated with the film Falling Down.
The 1993 movie, starring Michael Douglas, is about a divorced man who goes on a shooting rampage across Los Angeles after losing his job.
Hicks watched it repeatedly, found it hilarious.
It wasn’t long after moving into the apartment below him, that dental students Deah Barakat, 23,
and Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, got a taste of Hicks’ temper.
The newlyweds – who’d only been married six weeks – had been playing the board game Risk when he banged on their door one night.
Complaining about noise, his face was red with rage.
And a handgun poked menacingly out of a holster around his waist.
The couple were left shaken by the encounter.
Friends advised them to report Hicks to the police if he came knocking again.
And on 10 February 2015, Hicks did exactly that.
Only, this time, Deah came to the door with his mobile phone, ready to record anything that might happen.
Perhaps to get a restraining order out against Hicks, he told his wife and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19, who both waited in the living room.
What Deah hadn’t known was that he was about to record his own murder.
The video rolls as Deah approaches the door.
As soon as he opens it, Hicks is there looking angry.
Complaining they’ve taken up too many parking spaces again, breaking the complex’s rules.
But Deah politely insists they haven’t.
They were sticking to the rules – using only the two spaces allocated to them.
‘You’re going to be disrespectful towards me, I’m going to be disrespectful to you,’ Hicks snaps, pulling the gun from his waist.
Before Deah has a chance to escape, Hicks fires his weapon several times.
The phone drops to the floor and the agonising sounds of the two sisters screaming can be heard in the background.
More shots follow as Hicks walks into the apartment and shoots both women in the head at close range.
Before leaving, he fires more shots at Deah as he lies on the floor by the door.
In just 36 seconds, Hicks had executed three people. All over a parking space. Later, Hicks handed himself in to police. ‘I overreacted,’ he said. The local community were left distraught.
People feared the attack was racially motivated.
Local mosques added armed security at Friday prayer services, Muslims bought guns for self-defence.
Some Muslim women even stopped wearing head scarves out of fear.
But Hicks’ then-wife Karen told reporters faith hadn’t been a factor.
‘This incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith but was related to a long-standing parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbours,’ she said.
Not long after Hicks’ arrest, she filed for divorce. It was only after the prosecution dropped plans to seek the death penalty in June 2019 that Hicks pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder.
During the court hearing, it was revealed Hicks, a gunrights advocate, had at least 12 firearms in his home at the time of the murders.
Deah’s mobile-phone footage was shown.
The video left the victims’ families in tears. Deah’s older sister Dr Suzanne Barakat fainted.
Hicks was sentenced to three life terms in jail, without parole.
In the run-up to the trial, the victims’ relatives had pushed for him to face hatecrime charges.
They were adamant Deah, his wife and her sister were targeted by Hicks because they were Muslim. But authorities said they didn’t have sufficient evidence that a hate crime had taken place.
And lawyers said that any hate-crime element wouldn’t add time to the life sentence Hicks was already facing.
Regardless of Hicks’ motivation, the horrifying triple murder robbed three young people of their promising futures, leaving loved ones grief-stricken.
Friends of Deah Barakat described him as always smiling.
He and the Abu-Salha sisters had cooked food for the homeless.
‘They did not see colours in people, they saw beauty of the rainbow,’ the sisters’ father Dr Mohammad Abu-Salha said in court.
Deah and Yusor were raising money for a trip to Turkey to help Syrian refugees in need of urgent dental care.
On paper, the triple murder wasn’t a hate crime, yet one thing was clear.
Hicks’ uncontrollable rage was the reason these three innocent young people needlessly lost their lives.
In the background, there’s the sound of screaming