A Chapel Hill man is being held after he surrendered to police and admitted killing three Muslim students in their apartment. All three were shot in the head.

Washington Post:

The victims, identified in an alert from UNC Chapel Hill as husband and wife Deah Barakat, 23, and Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Mohammad’s sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were shot in the head. All three were pronounced dead at the scene when police arrived shortly after 5 p.m. Eastern Time.

The shooting jarred the quiet neighborhood of condos filled with grad students where Barakat and Yusor Mohammad lived. As sirens blared, friends and family members were seen begging for details about the crime. A report in UNC’s Daily Tar Heel described one woman, believed to be Yusor Mohammad’s mother, sobbing outside the scene of the crime. A few minutes later, a father screamed, “It’s been hours! Just tell me if he’s alive,” the paper said.

Kristen Boling, a UNC student who lives in the building where the shooting occurred, told the Daily Tar Heel she had been home since 3:45 p.m. but didn’t hear or see anything until police arrived on the scene.

“It was a regular day when I got off the bus,” she said. “Now it’s chaos and confusion and they’re not telling us what’s going on.”

The victims were described as well-liked in their community. Barakat, a dental student at UNC, was a volunteer for the Miswak Foundation, which provides dental care in impoverished countries. His most recent Facebook post showed him handing out dental supplies to homeless people in downtown Durham.

Al though no motive has been given, predictably, the drumbeat began:

The killings sparked outrage on Twitter, where users argued the three had been killed because of their religion. The hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter sprung up overnight, a response to what users saw as the media’s failure to cover the shooting.

Really? The story appears on Fox News, WaPo, NY Daily News, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Reuters, New York Times, ABC News and more than 200 other news websites, with more coverage being published every minute. I guess because the cable nets didn't immediately - immediately, I say - pick up the story and cover it wall to wall (like if a black teen had been gunned down by police), then the MSM just doesn't care about Muslim lives.

The shooter may be an atheist.

The Council on American Islamic Relations also addressed the potential religious motive for the shooting in a Facebook post, quoting a tweet that read: ““Three Muslims murdered tonight in Chapel Hill, NC by a man because they were Muslim. What a sad night in America.”

Police have not issued a statement about possible motives for the shooting, the Raleigh News Observer reported.

Hicks, the alleged shooter, frequently shared links about atheism on what appears to be his Facebook page. One such post reads: “People say nothing can solve the Middle East problem, not mediation, not arms, not financial aid. I say there is something. Atheism.”

If the guy is an atheist, it wouldn't have mattered if they were Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Hindu. CAIR - like any grievance group looking for publicity - jumped the gun on motive so that it fits into their "oppressed Muslims" narrative.

These were obviously three fine human beings animated by good hearts. It's a tragedy that they were murdered. We await proof that they were killed specifically because they were Muslims and not because they believed in a higher power of any kind.