Murders of Muslim students spark outrage

Reactions online to the news that three Muslim students were shot and killed at an apartment complex near the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill on Tuesday night ranged from outrage over delayed media coverage to calls for Americans to re-examine religious and race relations.

The victims, all shot in the head, were identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, of Chapel Hill, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh, police said. The two women were sisters.

Barakat was a second-year dental student at the university , WRAL-TV reports, quoting school officials.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, turned himself in to the Chatham County Sheriff's Office in Pittsboro, N.C., after the shooting Tuesday afternoon at a rental complex that the victims also lived in. Hicks has been charged with three-counts of first-degree murder.

Though it's unclear whether the crime was racially charged, police said it may have escalated over a parking spot.

Some folks on Twitter did not believe that to be true.

The hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter was tweeted over 75,000 times in the last 24 hours while #ChapelHillShootings was tweeted almost 70,000 according to Topsy, a social search and analytics site. Many voiced concern over delayed media coverage of the murders.

The hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter were used to offer condolences and spark a conversation about the way that crimes against Muslims are treated in the USA.

Follow @MaryBowerman on Twitter.