Chapel Hill shooter was hateful, but did he hate Muslims?

The college town of Chapel Hill, N.C., is reeling from the execution-style deaths of three Muslim students Wednesday.

Funerals will be held today for Deah Shaddy Barakat, a 23-year-old dental student, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh. Barakat and Abu-Salha were recently married and well-liked leaders in the Muslim Student Association at North Carolina State University. Barakat graduated from N.C. State and was studying dentistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Thousands gathered in Chapel Hill on Wednesday night for a candlelight vigil in the victims’ memory as authorities tried to determine the shooter’s motives.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, is under arrest for the killings and was a neighbor of Barakat and Abu-Salha. His wife, Karen Hicks, said the killings followed a dispute over parking spaces, something Craig Hicks seemed to have been constantly frustrated about.

Neighbors and acquaintances described him as argumentative and angry. They said he often confronted neighbors about parking spaces while wearing a gun on his hip.

Karen Hicks denied accusations that her husband targeted the victims because of their religion.

But the father of the two female victims, Mohammad Abu-Salha, said he believed religion must have played some role.

“The media here bombards the American citizen with Islamic, Islamic, Islamic terrorism and makes people here scared of us and hate us and want us out,” said Abu-Salha, a local psychiatrist. “So if somebody has any conflict with you, and they already hate you, you get a bullet in the head.”

Local police have turned to the FBI for help, but Ripley Rand, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina said the crime “appears at this point to have been an isolated incident.”

While many of his neighbors were students, Hicks was unemployed and, according to his ex-wife, obsessed with the movie Falling Down. The film, starring Michael Douglas, is about an unemployed middle-aged man who goes on a shooting rampage.

“That always freaked me out,” said Cynthia Hurley, who divorced Hicks 17 years ago. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all.”

Karen Hicks said her husband had long-running disputes with several neighbors over parking, something other residents at the complex confirmed.

“Anytime that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry,” said resident Samantha Maness. “He was very angry, anytime I saw him.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.