Quick update on two stories:
Chapel Hill Shooting
Today in North Carolina, the man who killed three Muslim students — sisters Yusor and Razan Abu-Salha, and Yusor’s newlywed husband, Deah Barakat — in February 2015 finally faced a measure of justice.
The basic facts have never been in dispute: Craig Stephen Hicks showed up at Yusor and Deah’s condo in Chapel Hill, N.C., where Razan was visiting for dinner, and shot his three unarmed young neighbors to death. Today’s hearing, in which Hicks pleaded guilty to all three murders and an additional count of discharging a weapon indoors, was really about the victims’ families getting a chance to wrest back a narrative that officials and much of the media initially got wrong, and millions of others still refuse to get right.
Immediately after the shooting, Chapel Hill police announced the shootings may have been the result of a “parking dispute.” This was based on an error—their misunderstanding of Hicks’ own, lie-filled confession. But even as…