Three Muslim students was murdered by an “anti-theist” radical near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill yesterday afternoon.

The killer was apparently their neighbor:

A 46-year-old Chapel Hill man has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder after three college students were shot and killed Tuesday evening at a condominium complex on Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, authorities said.

Craig Stephen Hicks turned himself in to the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office in Pittsboro following the shooting, which happened in the Finley Forest complex off Barbee Chapel Road shortly after 5 p.m.

Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, of Chapel Hill, Yusor Mohammad, 21, of Chapel Hill, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh, were pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

All three victims were shot in the head, sources said.

The murderer’s Facebook page is a still up at this time, and shows that he is obsessed with being anti-religious. His political views are radically left-wing.

Among his various anti-religion rants is the singular picture of a holstered .38 Special revolver that was likely the murder weapon.

The three murdered students seem to have been “good people.”

Victim Deah Shaddy Barakat was a second-year dental student and attempting to organize a trip to Turkey to treat refugees of the Syrian Civil War. He was married to victim Yusor Mohammad since late December. She was currently a student at NC State, and was going to start dental school at UNC-CH in the fall. Mohammad’s younger sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, was a sophomore at NC State who lived with her sister and brother-in-law. She was only 19.

The murderer, Hicks, described himself on Facebook as an “ugly, fat, stupid person.”

At least he is self-aware.

Bearing Arms is a Second Amendment-page, and so we have to look at the political side of this senseless tragedy as well.

At this time, Hicks is believed to have used his simple five-shot .38 Special revolver (pictured above) as the murder weapon, killing each of the victims at close range with shots to the head. This is unlikely to be useful for gun control supporters, as neither his weapon nor his politics were what gun control supporters would find useful in their quest to destroy your basic human right to self-defense.

There is no known motive for the killing, other than the fact that Hicks was obsessed with hating people of all religions.

Update: Authorities say that Hicks is cooperating with police, and that he told them that he murdered the three students in a long-running dispute over parking in their condominium community.

The father of the two girls vehemently denies that excuse, and the Durham County District Attorney doesn’t seem to be buying that excuse either.

The father of two Muslim women killed in a triple shooting at a condominium near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said Wednesday that the suspected gunman hated his daughter and son-in-law for who they were and how they lived, and he believes their deaths are hate crimes.

The statement comes as Durham District Attorney Roger Echols said that he is not ruling out the possibility of a hate crime in the slayings of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

The father went on to say that his daughters had warned them about a “hateful” neighbor who had come to their doorstep more than once with his weapon exposed.

It is pure speculation on my part, but I still suspect that Hicks’s rabid hatred of religion had more to do with this triple homicide than any parking dispute, and that he’s playing the parking dispute card in hopes of a federal hate crimes prosecution, which could result in a federal death penalty case in addition to the state prosecution.