‘I Heard His Thud on the Ground’: Palestinian Student Recounts ‘Living Nightmare’ of Vermont Shooting on The View
On Thursday’s episode of ABC’s The View, one of the three students of Palestinian descent targeted by a shooter in Burlington, Vermont shared the terrifying experience he and his friends had on November 25.
Kinnan Abdalhamid appeared on the show with his mother Tamara Tamimi days after he was released from the hospital after being treated for gunshot wounds. His other two friends, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Hisham Awartani, are still hospitalized.
The View hosts were content to let the family tell their story and only asked a couple of questions during the segment, and Abdalhamid’s account of what happened was chilling:
On the way back from the walk on the other side of the sidewalk, the same street as Hisham’s grandmother’s house, in front of us, on the same side, we see this man standing on the porch of his house, kind of looking away from us. As soon as he turns around and sees us… Two of my other friends were wearing the kaffiyeh. I wasn’t that day, however, I had the day before. And we’re speaking this kind of like mix of Arabic and English, we kind of call it like “Arabish.” He didn’t hesitate without a word to just run down the stairs of the porch, pull out a pistol, and start shooting.
It was almost surreal how quickly he did it. I still kind of remember it, and even at the moment it was kind of moving in a nightmare. … The way I perceived it wasn’t the same as perceiving anything else in my life. It really felt like I was in a living nightmare.
He shot Tahseen first, and that’s when I heard his thud on the ground and him start screaming. That was kind of my signal to make a run for it. A split second later, I heard the shot and a thud of… Now I know it’s Hisham hitting the ground. Then I jumped the fence across the street of a random house. I hid behind their backyard for about a minute, fully convinced that both my friends were dead because they were shot point blank, and he seemed like he was aiming to kill, so I thought that he might have shot them again.
I knocked on the glass behind the house and they didn’t answer because the lights were off. They might have been asleep or away. It was only 6:30. So then I decided that he’s either going to be after me or if my friends have any chance of surviving, I’m going to need to call 911.
After telling his story, the hosts turned to Tamimi, who had her own message about what it was like to see this happen to her son and his friends:
It’s hard to make sense of this. It really is, except just to say when people are dehumanized and when there’s rhetoric by like, you know, government officials and by the media where Palestinians are not really seen as human. Right? We you know, with this conflict in Gaza, we have the U.S. administration doubting the number of people that have died. We have to sort of prove how many babies have been killed. And at this time, quite honestly, I feel like no Palestinian is safe anywhere. So it’s really frightening. It’s really traumatizing.
Watch the full segment above via ABC.
