The man who shot Haverford College student Kinnan Abdalhamid was convicted Monday, Sept. 21, in Vermont.

A jury found Jason Eaton, 51, guilty of three counts of attempted second-degree murder for the November 2023 shooting of three Palestinian college students near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington. Eaton faces up to life in prison.

Abdalhamid, now 23, was shot in the right buttock during the attack. He testified that he fled and hid behind a nearby home after seeing his friend Tahseen Aliahmad fall to the ground. He only realized he had been wounded when he sat down, Main Line Media News reported.

The shooting also left Hisham Awartani, then a Brown University student, paralyzed from the waist down. Awartani now uses a wheelchair. Aliahmad, then a Trinity College student, was struck in the collarbone.

All three victims were 20 at the time and are now 23. They grew up together as schoolmates in Ramallah in the West Bank before coming to the United States for college.

The attack happened on Nov. 25, 2023, days after Thanksgiving and during the Israel-Hamas war. The three friends were visiting Awartani's grandmother's house in Burlington and had gone bowling to celebrate his twin cousins' birthday earlier that evening.

Insanity defense rejected

Eaton did not dispute he was the shooter. His defense team argued he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Eaton claimed the CIA and Mossad were transmitting orders to him through FM radio and that God was commanding him to protect his Jewish neighbors. Defense attorney Joshua O'Hara told jurors Eaton had lost his job at a credit union two weeks before the shooting and was suffering from a delusional disorder.

The jury rejected that defense after several hours of deliberation following a weeklong trial in Chittenden Superior Criminal Court.

A state forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Jhilam Biswas, testified that Eaton did not meet the legal standard for insanity. She cited his stress from job loss and his marijuana and alcohol use around the time of the shooting, Vermont Public reported.

Scene of the attack

Awartani testified that two of the three men were wearing traditional Palestinian scarves called keffiyehs and were speaking a mix of English and Arabic when Eaton approached. Eaton stepped off a porch, walked toward the group with an expressionless face and without saying a word, then opened fire from about 5 to 10 feet away.

"He pulled out a handgun and started shooting at us," Awartani testified.

Neighbor Jacob Pyne, who lived in a different apartment in the same house as Eaton, testified he heard four to six gunshots followed by footsteps going up the stairs. He ran outside, heard a man yelling "I've been shot, help me," brought the victims blankets and called 911.

Authorities recovered a Ruger .380-caliber handgun from Eaton's apartment that crime lab testing identified as the weapon used in the shooting. Eaton purchased the gun in April 2023 from Powderhorn Outdoor Sports in Williston, Vt., according to trial testimony from the store's co-owner Bryan Smith.

No hate crime charges

The shooting spawned calls for a hate crime investigation, but no such charges were filed.

When the verdict was read, Eaton stared ahead blankly. Awartani and Aliahmad, sitting in the front row of the courtroom gallery, smiled and hugged people around them.

Eaton was ordered jailed pending sentencing, which has not been scheduled.