One of the three young Muslim students shot dead in Chapel Hill, NC, on Tuesday praised America's harmony and tolerance in an interview recorded for the StoryCorps project last year. "Growing up in America has been such a blessing," Yusor Abu-Salha said in a joint interview with her third-grade teacher. The 21-year-old said that in some ways she stood out, but "there's still so many ways that I feel so embedded in the fabric that is, you know, our culture. And that's the beautiful thing here, is that it doesn't matter where you come from. There's so many different people from so many different places of different backgrounds and religions, but here we're all one, one culture." All three of the victims attended the same Islamic elementary school in Raleigh, and the teacher, who returned to StoryCorps this week, recalled them as "radiant" kids, NPR reports. In other developments:
- More than 5,000 people attended the funerals of Abu-Salha, her sister, and her husband yesterday, the AP reports. The women's father says he is sure the killings were a hate crime. "When we say this was a hate crime, it is all about protecting all other children in the USA," he told the crowd at the funeral. "It's all about making this country that they loved, where they lived and died, peaceful for everybody else."
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