In addition to Awartani’s life-altering spinal injury, the two other men were shot in the upper torso and lower extremities and hospitalized in the ICU, according to police. Two of the men were also wearing traditional Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs at the time of the attack, he said. “The fund will help cover costs associated with his rehabilitation, air travel of his family and expenses related to the adaptive needs of his new reality.”Īwartani and his two longtime friends from the Israeli-occupied West Bank – Kinnan Abdalhamid of Haverford College and Tahseen Ali Ahmad of Trinity College – were out for a walk on Saturday in Burlington, chatting as they often did in English and Arabic, when they were shot, according to Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad. “We believe that Hisham will meet this challenge with the same determination I’ve witnessed this week,” she said. Hisham Awartani, one of the three Palestinian college students who were shot while walking in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend, is paralyzed from the chest down after a bullet became lodged in his spine, his mother said.Īwartani’s family has launched a GoFundMe fundraiser to help the 20-year-old junior at Brown University, who is scheduled to be released from the hospital next week and then go on to receive rehabilitation care, said his mother, Elizabeth Price, in a statement to CNN.
