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Kinnan Abdalhamid, one of the three Palestinian college students shot in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend, recalled on Friday how he feared his friends were killed when he heard shots right out \u2014 and how their lives were likely saved by an emergency SOS call. <\/p>\n
“I was shaking and genuinely believed both of my friends were dead,” Abdalhamid told NBC News Now correspondent Zinhle Essamuah. <\/p>\n
Tune in to \u201cFear and Faith: Palestinians in America,\u201d a special set to stream on NBC News Now at 9 p.m. ET.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n He recounted the shock and fear that engulfed him when he and his friends Hisham Awartani and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, all 20,\u00a0were shot as they were out walking on Nov. 25 in Burlington, Vermont.<\/p>\n Earlier that day, Abdalhamid and his friends had been bowling and were going for a walk in Awartani\u2019s grandmother\u2019s neighborhood when terror struck. <\/p>\n \u201cWe walked around the block and on the way back, across the sidewalk, we see this man standing on his porch looking away,\u201d Abdalhamid said. \u201cHe turned around and as soon as he saw us, he ran down the steps, pulled out a pistol and started shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe first shot my friend Tahseen, and I soon heard the sound of his body on the ground and him screaming. That was my signal to run. Then I soon heard another pistol shot while running, Hisham hit the floor,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI jumped the fence and I believe that\u2019s when he shot me.\u201d<\/p>\n Abdalhamid said he hid in the backyard of a random house for a minute or two, shaking in fear.<\/p>\n “My phone was out of battery and I think it fell while I was jumping the fence. After gathering the courage, (I thought) like, ‘All right he could be after me now, or if my friends have any chance of surviving, I need to call 911 as soon as possible,’\u201d he said. <\/p>\n He limped as he rushed to another home where he saw through the windows that people were inside the residence. <\/p>\n \u201cI knocked the glass. I was like ‘Please, come out, I need y’all to come out.’ They stared for a bit and reluctantly came,” he recounted. He explained that his friends had been shot, and the family in the home called 911 and told him to sit on a bench outside. <\/p>\n Once he sat he felt a sharp pain in his backside \u2014 \u201cThat\u2019s when I was like, ‘Oh, I was shot as well,’\u201d Abdalhamid said. <\/p>\n Abdalhamid was shot in the glutes and was released from the hospital earlier this week. Tahseen Ali Ahmad, a student at Connecticut\u2019s Trinity College, was shot in the chest and Hisham Awartani,\u00a0a junior at Brown University in Rhode Island, was shot in the spine.<\/p>\n Abdalhamid asked the family for an ice pack and said he was losing consciousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n Police arrived quickly, and it turned out that Awartani may have saved their lives by using his phone\u2019s emergency SOS button.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c(Police) came so fast because it turns out Hisham \u2014 while he was down \u2014 after trying to open the phone with his code, he couldn\u2019t because there was too much blood on the phone,” Abdalhamid said. <\/p>\n “He was able to think of using the phone\u2019s emergency SOS, which probably directly saved both their lives.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n Abdalhamid urged officers to drive him directly to the hospital, warning that he was losing consciousness, and he made it safely to the hospital. <\/p>\n When he was reunited with his friends at the hospital they concluded, without question, that they were targeted for speaking Arabic. <\/p>\n “We were like ‘Why do you think it happened?’ We were like, ‘Oh yeah, probably because we were speaking Arabic. It was an instant conclusion because we can’t think about anything else,” he explained. <\/p>\n At the time of the shooting, he and his friends had been talking about how they probably hadn’t done enough homework during their Thanksgiving break, he said. <\/p>\n Officials haven\u2019t shared a motive as to why suspect Jason J. Eaton, 48, who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of second-degree attempted murder, opened fire. Abdalhamid told CNN earlier this week that the gunman didn\u2019t say a word to them when he pulled out a gun. <\/p>\n Police noted two of victims were wearing keffiyehs, traditional Palestinian scarves, at the time of the shooting, but haven’t said if it was hate-motivated. <\/p>\n “As soon as he was arrested we felt a lot safer in going out because we because thought it could be a genuine threat, at least on my part,” Abdalhamid said.<\/p>\n The shooting sparked outrage amid ongoing tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war and a surge in Islamophobia in the U.S. reminiscent of the post 9\/11 era.<\/p>\n “I have heard of other Palestinians being beat up, stabbed or humiliated, but I certainly didn\u2019t expect to be shot and there\u2019s a difference between intellectually knowing it and first hand experiencing it or close people around you experiencing it,” he said.<\/p>\n He noted that despite growing up in the West Bank, his mother wanted him to study in the U.S., thinking it would be safer.\u00a0<\/p>\n “There should be a lot more attention to the protection of not only Palestinians, but Arabs in general,” he said. “Because I feel that the type of people (that) shoot Palestinians cannot distinguish between them and an Arab, an Arab and a Muslim or a Muslim and a terrorist.” <\/p>\n “It\u2019s important to protect all groups. Everyone who follows the law should be protected no matter their identity.”<\/p>\n Despite the trauma, Abdalhamid says he’s focused on the strife of his people and the recovery of his friends.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly I haven\u2019t been focusing much on myself. They just ended the humanitarian pause and I\u2019ve been focusing on my people dying both in the West Bank and Gaza. So, that is really where my mind has been most of the time,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] Kinnan Abdalhamid, one of the three Palestinian college students shot in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend, recalled on Friday how he feared his friends were killed when he heard shots right out \u2014 and how their lives were likely saved by an emergency SOS call. “I was shaking and genuinely believed both of my friends …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}