A jury has convicted a Vermont man of attempted murder in the 2023 shooting of three Palestinian college students who were walking near his home in Burlington.

Jason Eaton was convicted Monday after jurors rejected an insanity defense based on his claims that he was acting under orders from US and Israeli intelligence agencies.

Eaton faces a possible sentence of up to life in prison for the November 2023 attack.

The three victims, Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Aliahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid, were all 20 years old at the time of the shooting. They had been visiting Awartani’s grandmother in Burlington during the Thanksgiving holiday.

The students were walking near the University of Vermont campus after dark when they were shot. They had been smoking cigarettes and speaking a mixture of English and Arabic, while two of them were wearing traditional Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs.

Awartani suffered severe injuries that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Aliahmad and Abdalhamid were also wounded in the attack.

The case centered in part on Eaton’s mental state and his claims about the circumstances surrounding the shooting. The jury ultimately rejected his insanity defense and found him guilty of attempted murder.

The conviction followed a closely watched trial involving the shooting of three Palestinian students in Burlington.

Sentencing has not yet been detailed in the information provided by The Associated Press.

SOURCE: The Associated Press, Michael R. Sisak and Amanda Swinhart, September 22, 2026.