- 36 seconds, that's how long it took for you to shatter our lives forever.

CHRIS BLUE: What happened at Chapel Hill will be with the Muslim community forever.

- They were just three innocent souls.

KENDRA MONTGOMERY-BLINN: You really have to ask, why were they targeted?

MOHAMMAD ABU-SALHA: We will not let hate win.

[ambient music] NARRATOR: Support for Reel South is provided by the ETV Endowment.

The National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional funding for this program is provided by-- And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

[phone ringing] [sirens] [voices on telephone] SUZANNE BARAKAT: I had just completed a procedure on a 15-year-old boy, and my cell phone starts lighting up with texts of condolences.

And I have no idea what they're talking about.

I thought maybe they had like the wrong person.

And surely, I would know about something happening to my family before everyone else.

- I just look up Chapel Hill shootings, and I see something about Summerwalk Circle, and I'm like... ...that's my brother's address.

[sirens] [sentimental music] FARRIS BARAKAT: Deah, he was always a lot of fun, playing at home any kind of game.

Playing with his brother and sister.

He like felt uncomfortable with his ears, I think I remember.

Because as a kid, his ears were too big.

He tasted like the bullying or the not belonging kind.

And I think what was special was that he kind of held on to that enough to not treat others like that.

- Go into the mouth.

And go right in there and clean it.

OK?

- [speaking Arabic] - Everybody he talks to, stranger, acquaintance, he develops a personal relationship with them, makes them feel special to him.

[car engine] FARRIS BARAKAT: They were all worried for Deah at first, but Yusor wasn't answering her phone either.

- I called my parents.

My father said, Yousef, relax.

I'm with your mom.

We're on the way to Chapel Hill.

We're going to figure this out.

My phone was getting flooded with text messages, condolences.

At this point, I understood that Deah and Yusor didn't make it.

[sentimental music] MOHAMMAD ABU-SALHA: Yusor was so full of energy.

She was so full of play and fun.

That whenever she had her friends over, she would play, and play, and play, and talk, and talk, and talk until she loses her voice, literally.

- This is Yusor's room.

Her nickname is Susu, and this is her certificate.

She graduated from NC State, Human Biology.

Those medals, actually, is Yusor's.

She received them while she was playing soccer, basketball.

MAN: Oh.

[music playing] YOUSEF ABU-SALHA: She was at a great point in her life.

You know, she had just graduated, she had a job, and she was just ready, ready for life.

She met Deah.

They fell in love.

They got engaged.

And she said, I want to do the same thing that Deah is doing.

I want to go to dental school.

[violin playing] AMIRA BAMYEH: She looked like a princess, and he was the prince.

She was very beautiful.

WOMAN: Your heart is slowing down?

[phone vibrating] - And my father called me.

And he said, Yousef, why did we study the interpretation of Quran for the past five years?

I said, Baba, we study it for reasons like this.

We study this for the test.

We're going to pass these tests.

I mean, I can barely breathe.

I can barely get these words out.

But they had to be the first words I said.

He's about to get off of the phone.

And I remember that there's a third victim.

And so I asked my dad who the third victim was, and he didn't want to answer.

He tried to get off the phone again.

He said, Yousef, I got to go.

Baba, just tell me.

Tell me.

Who is it?

And he said.

He said her name.

He said Razan.

[eerie music] It was so sudden.

My baby sister's gone too.

[sentimental music] - This is Razan's room.

My baby.

He used to call her Zizi.

- Razan was unique from day one.

She had artistic tendencies and skills.

She was an avid reader.

Curious child.

- She was a character, for sure.

She was spunky, and she was artistic and creative.

WOMAN: Very.

- Stop.

- You know, one time, we grabbed a couple of books and had breakfast at Chick-fil-A.

And then we drove over and literally just sat and read on the beach and just enjoyed each other's company really.

- Razan, she would just wake up every morning thinking of other people.

She organized the Feed the Hungry Campaign in Downtown Raleigh, where they cooked, and they packaged foods and household items, and they went and distributed it to the homeless.

She saw what was going on, for example, in 2014, in Gaza.

[explosion] She's like, how can I help?

She started painting these beautiful doves.

She painted maybe hundreds of them, and she would sell them at these charity events.

And that money she would donate to Gaza.

- We out here.

- We out here.

- On these streets.

- On these streets.

- Living life.

SUZANNA BARAKAT: For many people, the last time they saw them was at their wedding.

That was the last time I saw him.

And that was my goodbye.

[crying] - Sometimes, the question is like how can one person do so much to disturb the lives of so many people?

[sirens] [brooding music] [buzzer] [music playing] [door closes] - A neighbor turned out to be the suspect, who within an hour or so, turned himself in, actually in a neighboring jurisdiction.

[suspenseful music] [distant siren] - I recall talking to our investigators about how calm he was and how matter of fact he was.

- He described the confrontation and the subsequent actions that he took.

And they were struck by how normal the interaction seemed to be as Hicks described it.

- The speed with which he produced a weapon and started firing suggests a level of intentionality that's hard to deny.

MOHAMMAD ABU-SALHA: We knew who Craig Hicks was.

Yusor told us that they had a neighbor who harassed them, hated them, yelled at them, was condescending, picked on everything they did.

Told her on two occasions that he hated her literally and told her on one occasion that he hated how she dressed and how she looked.

[suspenseful music] [camera click] [camera clicks] [music playing] [door closes] [music playing] - Any homicide is significant.

Triple homicide is unheard of in our community.

This is, in many ways, an internationally known university town.

People come here from all over the world to study and learn.

And so it does draw a significant amount of attention.

[mysterious music] MOHAMMAD ABU-SALHA: The media did pick up very fast.

The story was airing nationally and internationally.

We knew that the next day would be all media and people coming to our house.

And it was shocking and gut-wrenching to see them on TV.

[sirens] [helicopter] - The news, it was so chaotic.

It was traumatic.

And then-- REPORTER: Police are saying that, quote, an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking may have been a factor in the killing.

- Police tell us that a parking dispute was really at the heart of this triple murder.

- Police say this may have simply been a fight over parking spaces.

[camera clicking] - How insulting.

The three jewels from our community murdered over a parking dispute?

Does that make any sense to anyone?

- Why are they being portrayed as someone who's picking a fight about a parking spot and dying for it?

That is very insulting.

CHRIS BLUE: Our interest was to share that this was not the beginning of some kind of coordinated attack on our Muslim community.

Folks in the Muslim community were keeping their kids home from school that day and understandably so.

The intent of our release was to address some of those concerns.

SUZANNE BARAKAT: It was that statement that had me so furious, that made me want to make sure that that the narrative was corrected.

Six weeks ago, I cried tears of joy at my baby brother's wedding.

Today, we are crying tears of unimaginable pain over the execution-style murders of my brother Deah, his bride Yusor, and her younger sister and best friend, Razan.

We are still in a state of shock and will never be able to make sense of this horrendous tragedy.

We ask that the authorities investigate these senseless and heinous murders as a hate crime.

[sirens] REPORTER: There are still many more questions than answers about what happened in these apartments here last night.

[suspenseful music] - Dr. Barakat, even if a hate crime designation for first degree murder in North Carolina doesn't necessarily carry any added legal penalties, can you tell us what meaning is there for you in an official classification of the act as a hate crime?

- I think it's important, regardless of the outcome, to call it that because it changes so many things.

Because this wasn't an isolated incident that just happened to my family.

It's not OK.

In the past week alone, aside from three family members being shot in their own home, there was a mosque burnt down in Houston.

There was a man shot through his apartment door and killed in Ottawa.

There was someone badly beat in Dearborn, Michigan, just in this past week.

I don't need to dig far.

We live in a time where today it's socially acceptable, it's politically advantageous to demonize Muslims.

MOHAMMAD ABU-SALHA: Muslim Americans, like any immigrant community, like to belong to this country.

They like to call this home.

I and my wife were both Jordanian citizens by birth.

Then I realized it was very hard to get a graduate medical education there.

So I decided to come and have my graduate education in the United States.

Being a psychiatrist, I've been seeing about 25 to 30 patients a day for the last 21 years.

So I probably know more about the intimate details of the American life than some born Americans.

For me and Amira, our challenge was we wanted our children to belong.

Because we lived foreigners all our lives.

So we knew the challenge.

I raised my children believing that the land you live on, and the land you work at, and the land you eat from is your home.

SUZANNE BARAKAT: Growing up in the South as a Muslim American woman post 9/11, it really started to become that much clearer that I wasn't always welcome, and that was a culture shock for me because this is all I knew to be as home.

I always felt like my role was to carry a representation of what it meant to be an American Muslim woman-- educated, kind, courteous, respectful, successful-- because for many people, I was the only Muslim they've ever met.

For people as kind and gentle and loving as Deah, Yusor, and Razan were, would be killed, I realized that that approach wasn't working anymore.

[birds chirping] REPORTER: Thursday, thousands of mourners were on hand to honor the memories of those three victims during their funerals.

Their caskets were carried to the Method Road Soccer Field at NC State University, near the Islamic Center.

5,000 people were in attendance.

[mellow music] REPORTER: The massive crowds that came to mourn made it clear that Muslims here feel a bubbling tide of resentment that has boiled over.

- We are walking a dark path as a nation because of hate, like Craig Hicks killing my children, like the Church of Christ massacre, like the South Carolina church massacre.

All these start small, and they can grow big.

[mellow music] - Hate crime prosecution is important because just imagine that there was some characteristic of yours that you could not change.

You can't hide it.

You can't run away from it.

It is a part of who you are, that anyone would target you based on that.

That's the fear that hate crimes cause.

MANAR WAHEED: Federal hate crimes laws were created because states weren't actually prosecuting.

So decades ago, when, for example, Black people were being targeted by the KKK and there were criminal laws in place to prosecute them, prosecutors, law enforcement, they weren't pursuing those cases.

And they weren't pursuing them in parts because they were allied with the perpetrators.

In the '60s, there was a shift towards putting some of this into federal prosecutions.

- In order to prosecute a hate crime, you have to have a very overt action.

For example, somebody posting on social media, I'm looking for this type of victim, and going out and victimizing that type of victim.

Over the last decade especially, as a society, our understanding has grown to view racism as something more implicit, something more subtle, but that can have just as terrible an effect.

The law has not caught up with where social science is and where our community has gone to.

- Our hate crimes data is horrible.

It's largely a waste of time.

REPORTER: Hate crime reporting is not federally mandated.

Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin explained the problem this way.

- We do not have the slightest idea how many hate crimes there are in America, and we have never known.

The numbers currently kept by the FBI are largely useless.

REPORTER: The FBI agrees that the data is not at all accurate.

- We have maybe 1,000 hate crimes reported in California.

About 500 reported in New York.

Mississippi and Alabama don't even total 10.

Those numbers are a joke.

We know that there are tens of thousands more hate crimes than the FBI ever puts in their report.

MANAR WAHEED: The poor law enforcement reporting of data to the FBI is a huge problem, because we can't address a problem that we can't get our hands around.

And if we don't know the volume at which it's happening, who it's happening to, what the circumstances are, we actually can't get at the root of the problem, and we can't do the prevention work either.

[sirens] [suspenseful music] - The narrative of a parking dispute, it was from a confession of the person who murdered them, who walked in, smiling, and telling them, "oh, I did this over parking."

- You took his word without bothering to go [muted] check the parking lot?

Excuse my language.

- Entitlement allowed Mr. Hicks to be given some type of benefit of the doubt, some type of control of the narrative after these horrific murders.

- He's jovial and ingratiating to the police officers.

And it's clear that he considers himself closer, more like these police officers in this position, that they would understand why he did what he did.

- He was given the opportunity by investigation, by society, by media to tell his version of how he murdered three people in cold blood, and that benefit wouldn't be given if the tables were turned.

- There's no doubt that if a single Muslim individual killed three white people, that every news channel would have talked about the terrorist incident that had just happened, even without any other evidence, though the exact conduct by white individuals is dismissed as just a random crime.

- I'm Ripley Rand, I'm the United States Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.

This is not at a point where it is a federal investigation.

This is not a federal investigation yet.

The events of yesterday are not part of a targeted campaign against Muslims in North Carolina, and I did want to address some comments made on social media about that, and to make sure that people know that this appears, at this point, to have been an isolated incident.

[sentimental music] KENDRA MONTGOMERY-BLINN: At that point, and we had to deal with the legal system in North Carolina.

My job is not an easy job.

I sit every day with people who are experiencing the worst grief in their life.

And the only thing that I can ever give them is to tell what happened, to tell it in a court setting, and to tell the truth.

Hicks told police that he didn't wake up until noon.

And so he was unemployed.

He was playing video games the night before all day and woke up at noon to go to a class at Durham Technical Community College.

KENDRA MONTGOMERY-BLINN: Deah rode the bus home with his friends, said goodbye to his friends, and headed back to his apartment.

Yusor had come home from work, and Razan had finished school and come over to have dinner with them.

Mr. Hicks stated that he came back from school to the apartment complex.

- There were a lot of split between reserved parking, which every unit gets one reserved space, and non-reserved parking.

We have one spot reserved for us.

That's where my wife parks.

And I have to park somewhere else.

I pulled in the lot, weren't any non-reserved spaces.

[suspenseful music] I'm gonna park at my wife's spot for now.

I had no place else to park.

KENDRA MONTGOMERY-BLINN: Other neighbors have indicated that Craig Hicks felt that he was entitled to two spots.

- What he claimed to be his two reserved spots were these two.

These back to back right here.

- The truth is Deah's roommate, he went by, and there were no cars parked in those spots.

And so before anything was done, we all went and took pictures of the parking lot.

SEAN MARONEY: When I sat down with the parents, they finally gave me photos of the parking lot from that night.

You can see the parking situation of that night.

And these are the facts.

The two spots in front of the Hicks' place, empty.

CRAIG HICKS: I had no place else to park.

KENDRA MONTGOMERY-BLINN: The day of the murder, Deah's car was in 20B.

This is the spot that was assigned to Deah and Yusor.

Yusor's car was parked in 20E right here, which wasn't assigned to any particular condo or townhouse.

Razan had come over.

She didn't even park in the lot.

Razan was parked out here on the street.

Deah, Yusor, and Razan were parked exactly where they were permitted to be parked.

[dramatic music] When police arrived, they first found Deah shot, still in the doorway.

The autopsy revealed that Deah had eight gunshot wounds to his head, his chest, and his hands.

Some of those wounds were likely re-entry wounds going from his hand into his body.

Deah also had bullets in his body from different angles, which means that Hicks shot Deah first and last.

He shot Deah upon entry, and on his way out, shot Deah one last time in his head.

Yusor had two shots.

She had been shot from the back, which typically means that she was trying to get away.

And then execution style into her head, which means that he put the gun very close or touching her hijab.

And Razan had been shot once, execution style, in a contact range gunshot to her head, which means that he had put the gun close to her, touching her hijab.

It's a level of malice that I've not seen before.

- The fact that they were executed, that they were killed in such an aggressive, abhorrent way, should absolutely be part of the evaluation of why they were killed.

- He executed them.

He didn't just kill them.

There is a big difference.

- So then the question became, well, why did he really do it?

I'm Margaret Talbot.

I'm a staff writer for The New Yorker.

So this was February 2015.

Craig Hicks, he was not on his way up in the world.

He was a White man in his 40s who was angry and aggrieved.

This guy had been married three times, was on his third marriage, had moved into the condominium of his wife.

He was behind considerably in child support payments for one of his two children from a former marriage, was unemployed, had lost or quit several jobs.

- You could see that he viewed himself as a victim.

Craig Hicks had been an owner in Finley Forest for a long time.

As the community evolved around him, more and more people were moving in who were UNC graduate students and bringing a lot of diversity to the community.

And it seems clear from the emails that Craig Hicks sent to the homeowners association that he felt his American dream was being taken from him and that it was being taken from him by, his words were "these people."

- And Deah and Yusor had recently purchased the townhouse in that community.

- Hi.

- Face that wall right there.

MARGARET TALBOT: Craig Hicks' chosen targets were three young children from Muslim immigrant families who were remarkably successful together, people on their way up in the world.

And it was clear that he was acting out of some kind of resentment, fueled by that comparison and fueled by his own particular rage, but a particular rage that I think has become very politically significant in this country.

[brooding music] MARGARET TALBOT: And it is also, I think, pretty clear that he became angrier after Yusor moved into the apartment, and she and her sister were around a lot.

- Deah had lived there for a year and a half prior to this with Imad, both Muslim.

But they don't wear the headscarf.

They never saw a weapon.

How come when my sister showed up, they started seeing weapons?

[music playing] - We had a wealth of information that Deah and Yusor were left for us through text messages that they exchanged with each other and with friends.

And it was very clear from those texts that they were afraid of Mr. Hicks.

- Yusor feared that guy.

- And the first thing I said to her-- this was over that winter break.

I said, he's racist.

- I knew from my daughter Yusor how much he hated them and what he said to her, including I don't like how you look.

I don't like how you dress.

YOUSEF ABU-SALHA: My mom told me, when she went to help Yusor move in a few things.

AMIRA BAMYEH: I noticed that he was talking with her, and he was nervous.

His voice was loud.

He told me, this neighbor, this is the second time he gave me a hard time.

So immediately, I told her, let me talk to him and see what's the problem.

She said, no, please, Mom, don't talk to him.

He's my neighbor, and with time, he will knows us.

He will know me and Deah.

MARGARET TALBOT: There is evidence that displays of religion were very triggering to him.

REPORTER: Hicks, who claims he is an atheist, allegedly posted anti-religious statements on his Facebook page, writing, quote, "When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me.

If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I."

- His own Facebook posts post showed that he was aggressively anti-religious and viewed people who held strong to faith as foolish, that he was smarter than them.

They were trying to placate him, trying to be nice.

Yusor sent a text to Deah about how she saw him and tried to say hi.

And that he was angry with her and huffed off.

MOHAMMAD ABU-SALHA: Two or three days before the crime, I told her, if your husband doesn't do something about this and the restraining order, I'm going to come to your neighborhood and do something with the police.

We were feeling the danger.

- What Mr. Hicks told the police we know is not accurate.

He lied to the police about Deah that day, saying that Deah had cursed him.

- He even speculated that Deah had a knife and had cut him.

- But it was a lie, which we know because-- [dramatic music] Deah found a way to tell the truth, [gun shot] even after his life was taken.

[gun shot] - Deah's cell phone footage was the evidence that you can't dispute.

He literally had filmed the encounter that Hicks said was a parking dispute, and he was disrespected.

And therefore, he went on a shooting rampage.

When the reality is you see the entire encounter of Deah opening the door, being respectful, and Hicks pulling out the gun and starting to shoot them.

[suspenseful music] REPORTER: It's been four years since Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha were murdered in Chapel Hill.

The case against the man accused of murdering these three people is coming to a close.

- We met with the families multiple times.

They expressed to us that the most important things were to get this case moving.

It was already four years old now.

And to tell the truth about this case and what happened.

It mattered to explain why he chose them.

But the idea of motive is something that's often not even done at a sentencing hearing or a plea.

So it was the only thing that we could give them.

REPORTER: Court documents show cell phone video may prove this was actually a hate crime.

At least that's what the victim's family members believe.

[music playing] [foot steps] - The video is horrible.

And I do not want to underestimate the impact that will have on people who see it.

- The decision on whether or not to play Deah's video was one that Satana and I left entirely to the family.

We did not know what they were going to do.

- Like who are we trying to convince here?

You quote it.

I think the family members and the friends would appreciate not watching it, would get the full effect of what happened.

And, you know, if you're going to listen to the truth, you're going to listen to the truth.

If you're going to deny it, you're going to deny it whether it's clear or a little bit less clear.

- I think it should be showed.

We've gone through so much already.

We've lost them.

The world should know about it, and it should be seen.

- Having it on media forever afterwards is going to be very bad for us as families.

Never a closure ever, and it can be used in a bad way by his supporters.

It can be twisted.

It can be commented on.

That's my fear.

So I really hope that we can avoid showing it all together if we can.

On one side, you're in a fighter mode as you want the truth to be shown.

And on the other side, yes, there is a part of you that says, please, for God's sake, get over and done with.

I want to live my life.

But I was sensitive to what my wife can deal with.

I did not expect her to survive that video.

I did not.

So I left the last word to her.

- I'm in favor of playing the video if we have to.

Yeah.

So I don't mind even if the whole world sees it.

This is the truth.

[tense music] [side conversations] - Good morning.

Kendra Montgomery-Blinn for the State.

These young people were proud to be Muslim.

They were proud to be Americans, and they were living the American dream.

Meanwhile, the defendant, Craig Stephens Hicks, life was on a very different trajectory.

In my career, I've had many cases that were under the microscope.

What was stressful about this case was that I knew my one job was to get every piece of this motive out.

The American dream was slipping from his grasp.

He had lost his job at the Ford's Parts Department.

Co-workers described him as having a fanatical fascination with guns and playing computer sniper games while at work.

In Mr. Hicks' house, officers discovered 13 more guns.

And the murder weapon was in his car.

The Chapel Hill Police Department interviewed 36 neighbors in the Finley Forest community.

To the White neighbors, Mr. Hicks left angry notes, shouted at them, and told them to move.

They did not notice him having a gun or displaying a gun during those interactions.

To the non-White neighbors, Mr. Hicks displayed firearms and threatened them with violence.

But Mr. Hicks saved the worst of his ire for Deah Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha.

When Deah and Yusor and Razan sat down to share dinner on February 10, 2015, Mr. Hicks came to their door.

They had grown fearful of the defendant and his increasing gun-wielding hostilities.

And Deah did something that he did not normally do.

He answered the door with his phone in his hand, on record.

Deah did not know what he was about to record.

But Deah's last act on this Earth is definitive proof that Mr. Hicks acted with malice and an outright effort to slander the victims in order to falsely mitigate his own cruelty.

Deah gives us the final proof that the only words Mr. Hicks repeated to the police in that dialogue that were accurate was Mr. Hicks' own well-rehearsed phrase, "if you're going to disrespect me, I will disrespect you."

May we approach, your honor?

KENDRA MONTGOMERY-BLINN: The video that Deah took was so important, so powerful, and the final piece to show what this motive for Craig Hicks was.

But it was such a difficult moment.

Before we played it, I stopped and asked the judge if I could approach but instead approached Amira first to confirm that this was still the wish of the family, and she gave me the go ahead.

And then we went to the judge to get ready to have it sealed to play it.

All cameras off.

All sound off.

Just the people that were there in that courtroom.

- State has asked the court to order that all recording devices, cameras, photographs be turned off during this short period of time that this tape is going to run.

The court will so order.

So do not record.

- As I sat in that courtroom with family members and community members, they did tell us, if anyone would like to step out, now is the time.

And that was the cue for myself and others to leave, but not a single person moved.

I mean, you can hear a pin drop in that courtroom.

Everyone was silent.

[cursing] - Calm down.

- Then after the recording was done, you can see in everyone's face the-- the toll it took to hear Yusor and Razan screaming, pleading to him, saying, "please don't do it.

Don't do it."

ROY AUSTIN: To look back at the perpetrator's life, he kind of left the breadcrumbs as to where he was going, kind of this totality of the circumstances.

So absolutely, his online persona matters.

The words he use matters.

The fact that he pre-textually created this idea that there was a parking dispute mattered.

All of the aggressive actions he took toward people of color, all of that adds up to why in my heart, there's never been a doubt that this was a hate crime.

JUDGE: Anything from the state as to any aspect of sentencing?

- Yes, your honor.

JUDGE: All right.

- In light of the factual basis, we'd like to now call the families for victim impact.

- Thank you, your honor, for allowing me to speak.

I will be addressing you, the hateful murderer.

You executed my sisters and my best friend in cold blood out of pure hatred.

You saw them as others.

You hated the hijab.

You saw these beautiful, kind-hearted, philanthropic academic achievers, people of faith, the exact antithesis of you as evil, when in fact, you are evil.

[mellow music] - I still have nightmares where I-- I wake up in the morning confused because I just had a really vivid dream where I was looking for my baby brother.

And I couldn't find him.

Or I found him, and he's OK. Why is everyone saying that he's not alive?

People don't realize what it takes to actually sit in this chair.

I'm not doing this for me.

It's because it's time for a change, and I'm tired of carrying that burden.

- I see you looking at me.

And I have questions for you.

36 seconds.

That's how long it took for you to shatter our lives forever.

Why?

How?

Was it worth it?

What would have happened had you decided on that fateful evening to join them for dinner instead?

How might this day, June 12, 2019, be different for you, for me, for all of us, and for the Deah, Yusor, and Razan?

Alas, I will never know.

But this is what I do know.

I will never hug my brother again.

I will never be an aunt to their children.

I will never have holidays with them ever again.

These are nevers that are as real as it gets for me, my family, and my community.

- Mr. Hicks, if you stand right there where you are.

All right then, Miss Clerk, he's sentenced to three consecutive sentences of life and imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

All right, Mr. Sheriff, he's in your custody, sir.

[brooding music] Mr. Sheriff, this sentencing proceeding has terminated.

You can clear the courtroom peacefully, please.

JOE CHESHIRE: Our government failed these families.

If our federal law is not changed to consider an act like this as a hate crime, then it should be rewritten, and it should be named after these three beautiful children.

[music playing] JERRY NADLER: Dr. Abu-Salha.

- Good morning, Mr. Chairman.

I am afraid for our country.

In 2016, the FBI recorded a 67% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

And just weeks ago, a young man in Indiana was shot in the back of the head by a man shouting anti-Muslim slurs.

And we miss our children so much.

At times, the pain is just as sharp now as it was when they died.

And I ask you, I truly plead to you not to let another American family go through this because our government would not act to protect all Americans.

Please remember them-- Yusor, Deah, and Razan.

They are my children, and they are gone.

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