An upcoming hearing for the man charged with shooting and wounding three students of Palestinian descent last month in Burlington has been called off after his attorneys agreed not to challenge a prosecutor’s request that he remain held without bail.
Jason Eaton, 48, had been scheduled to appear in Chittenden County Superior criminal court in Burlington on Monday, Dec. 18, for a hearing to review his bail. He has been held in custody without bail since his Nov. 27 arraignment on three counts of attempted second-degree murder.
Eaton’s attorneys, along with Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George — the prosecutor in the case — filed a “Stipulation to Hold Without Bail” motion Tuesday, which was approved by Judge Kevin Griffin.
In agreeing to not challenge the hold without bail order and forgo a hearing on the strength of the prosecutor’s case at this point, the filing said that Eaton “reserves his right to request a bail review hearing at any time during the pendency of this case.”
In the filing, George and Eaton’s attorneys, Sarah Varty and Margaret Jansch, requested the next hearing in the case be set in 60-75 days.
That hearing has since been set for March 8.
Eaton has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
According to charging documents, Eaton, a white man, shot the three young men — Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad — who had been visiting family in the area over the Thanksgiving holiday as they were walking on Prospect Street in Burlington on the evening of Nov. 25.
The filing stated that the three men, all 20 years old, were speaking a mix of Arabic and English when Eaton came at them from a porch and, without saying anything, shot all three.
Two of the men, Awartani and Aliahmad, were wearing keffiyehs, a traditional scarf that is a symbol of Palestinian identity, at the time of the shootings. Prosecutors have not yet indicated if they plan to file a hate crime enhancement on top of the attempted murder charges.
Abdalhamid and Aliahmad have since been released from the hospital, while Awartani, who had a bullet lodged in his spine and was paralyzed from the chest down, has been transferred from the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington to a rehabilitation facility in Massachusetts.
