Burlington, VT — A forensic psychiatrist testified Wednesday that Jason Eaton, charged with shooting three Palestinian students in November 2023, was suffering from a psychotic disorder at the time of the incident and was unable to distinguish right from wrong. Eaton faces three counts of second-degree attempted murder for the shooting, which left one victim paralyzed from the chest down and injured the others. Eaton has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Dr. Fabian Saleh, from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, told the Chittenden Superior Court that Eaton believed he was acting under orders from intelligence agencies and a higher power when he fired at the students. According to Saleh, Eaton’s condition involved untreated and ongoing mental illness, and the defendant lacked the capacity to appreciate the criminality of his actions. Saleh added that there was no evidence suggesting that Eaton’s mental health claims were fabricated.
The testimony included recordings made five days after the shooting in which Eaton appeared manic and confused but also articulate. In these recordings, he described receiving messages from the CIA, Israeli intelligence, his ancestors, and God via FM radio and Bluetooth, instructing him to carry out surveillance on a neighboring Jewish household and ultimately to shoot someone, though the intended target was unclear. Eaton also referenced the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, which had escalated seven weeks prior to the shooting, saying voices told him to act because negotiations over Israeli hostages taken in the conflict were stalled.
The victims—Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Aliahmad—are Palestinian and Palestinian-American college students attending Brown University, Haverford College, and Trinity College, respectively. They were visiting Awartani’s grandmother in Burlington over the Thanksgiving holiday and were walking in a residential neighborhood at the time of the shooting. Two of the victims wore traditional black-and-white keffiyehs. Authorities initially considered whether the incident might be a hate crime, but prosecutors later stated there was insufficient evidence to file such a charge.
Eaton’s sister, Amy Rubright, testified that Eaton had expressed similar troubling thoughts to her during a phone conversation a year before the shootings. Defense attorneys have presented more than a dozen witnesses, including law enforcement officers who linked the spent shell casings at the scene to a handgun registered to Eaton.
The prosecution plans to call its own mental health expert to challenge the defense’s psychiatric evaluation. Prosecutors have argued that Eaton’s behavior reflects narcissism and arrogance rather than a psychotic disorder. The trial, which began earlier this week, is expected to conclude within the next several days. The three victims have testified about the shooting, describing Eaton’s approach and attack in detail.