A fund has been established to continue the service work and honor the memory of two UNC dental students who were killed earlier this year.
UNC and the Dental Foundation of North Carolina have established a new memorial award honoring the late Deah Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha. Barakat, his wife Yusor, and her younger sister Razan were all shot and killed in February of this year in the Finley Forest Condos.
Barakat was a student at the UNC School of Dentistry and Abu-Salha was a member of the incoming class to begin this fall and both had a passion for working with those less fortunate across the globe. The university says the couple was planning a trip to Turkey this summer to provide dental care to Syrian refugees.
In their honor, the Deah Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha Memorial Award will fund service projects for future students, according to Tiffany Brannan Director of Communications for the UNC School of Dentistry.
The Dental Foundation of North Carolina and UNC each committed $30,000 to the fund, and Brannan says many other donations have been made by the public.
You can contribute through this link. In the “Select a Fund” tab, toggle to the “Barakat Memorial Fund.”
Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha had been married for six weeks at the time of their deaths. The third victim, Abu-Salha’s younger sister, was a sophomore at NC State.
46-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks turned himself into authorities in Chatham County the night of the shooting. He has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
Chapel Hill Police say the initial investigation points to an ongoing parking dispute as the motive for the shooting.
Others point to the murder of the three Muslim students as a hate crime.
Durham District Attorney Roger Echols is seeking the death penalty against Hicks. His next court appearance is tentatively scheduled for early August.
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