- Authorities arrested Jason James Eaton, in connection with the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont.
- Eaton was part of tight-knit, progressive community in upstate New York.
- Eaton had no racist views or interest in guns, former associates say, but his recent social media postings show a turn toward extremism.
Authorities charged Jason James Eaton in connection with shooting three college students of Palestinian descent Sunday, according to the Burlington Police Department.
The motivation for the shooting of Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ahmed, and Kinnan Abdalhamid is still unknown. Police said they found evidence of probable cause in his apartment, which faces the location of the Saturday night shooting. Eaton pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Speculation that the shooting was a hate crime fueled by rising tensions amid domestic protests and the Israel-Gaza war is perplexing those who knew 48-year-old Eaton, two former employers, and coworkers told Business Insider.
Dick deGraffe owns a farm in Pulaski, New York, part of a tight community centered around organic farming. Eaton worked for him at Grindstone Farm, where he managed the finances and operation of the 40-year-old organic farm and the two stayed in contact until approximately two years ago, he said.
“When I heard the name on the news this morning, I said it couldn’t be him,” deGraffe told Business Insider when reached by phone Monday morning. The farm owner knew Eaton for 25 years, he said, and he didn’t recall seeing any signs of extremism, Islamophobia, or racism.
“He was a bright guy, a jack-of-all-trades,” deGraffe said. “He had a background working in financial advising,” and was closely tied to the Syracuse community. Eaton worked for a string of organic farms, an organic brewing company, and also did craftsman work, according to his resume and now-deleted LinkedIn page.
DeGraffe first met Eaton in a Community Supported Agriculture group, he said. Eaton appeared to have a longtime passion for farming, based on his Instagram posts. Eaton also volunteered with disabled children, helping them rock climb with an adaptive rock climbing group, according to event listings from a Syracuse rock climbing gym in 2019. He had at least one child with a partner, deGraffe recalled.
Eaton was known to some in the local restaurant industry as “the veggie quiet,” who brought organic vegetables to local chefs. A former acquaintance who declined to be named was shocked when informed of the news by Business Insider that the Syracuse fixture, “that hippie guy,” was the accused shooter.
Eaton recently relocated to Burlington, Vermont, according to Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad, who said in a news conference Monday, “We believe he arrived sometime in the summer and has not been a resident here for long, we believe he came from the Syracuse area and we have made contact with people who knew him there. We are working on whether there are additional records in other places.”
“[The news] just doesn’t sound like him,” deGraffe said, adding that Eaton never talked about guns or violence when he knew him and he thought he had a “progressive” worldview and didn’t remember Eaton displaying any signs of mental illness. Eaton’s mother, however, told the Daily Beast that he has struggled with mental illness in the past.
Recent social media postings from Eaton, however, first uncovered by Vice, show a turn toward more extreme viewpoints. A banner image on an X account that appears to be Eaton’s reads “Libertarians want trans furrys to be able to protect their cannabis farms with unregistered machine guns.”
An Instagram account believed to be Eaton’s followed an account called “WorldMilitaryWarfare” and in 2020 posted a meme with a definition of “Amerika” that called it “the worst sense of the United States, ie imperialism, corruption and the global exportation of American culture.”
The three victims, all 20 years old, were visiting Awartani’s grandmother for the holidays, a former teacher, Rania Maayeh told CNN. Burlington police said that they were walking on the street when a man with a handgun shot them at least four times without saying anything. The three students are currently in intensive care, and Awartani, who was shot in the spine, remains immobilized.
The Vermont shooting comes amid rising concerns that Islamophobia and antisemitism are increasing the threat of violence nationwide. Last month in Illinois, a 6-year-old boy was stabbed to death, targeted for being Palestinian-American.
Correction: November 28, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated where the 6-year-old was stabbed. It was in Illinois, not Michigan.
