Police probing the murder of three Muslim students by a North Carolina man say they are studying whether they were racially motivated, as calls mount for the killings to be treated as a hate crime.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, faces three counts of first-degree murder after Tuesday's shootings in the university town of Chapel Hill which have created Muslim outrage worldwide.
Police emphasised initial investigations indicated a dispute between Hicks and his victims over parking spaces might have sparked the killings of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, wife Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.
"Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbour dispute over parking," Chapel Hill police said, adding Hicks was cooperating.
"Our investigators are exploring what could have motivated Mr Hicks to commit such a senseless and tragic act.
"We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case," police chief Chris Blue said.
The cautious wording by police contrasted sharply with anger among many Muslims, with the father of two of the students demanding investigators treat the killing as a "hate crime."
"This was not a dispute over a parking space ..." said Mohammad Abu-Salha, the dead women's father.
"This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt."
Abu-Salha said his daughter had voiced fears recently about Hicks.
"Honest to God, she said, 'He hates us for what we are and how we look'," Abu-Salha was quoted as saying.
A viral campaign asserted the killings had been under-reported by US mainstream media because of the ethnicity of the victims.
The hashtags #ChapelHillShooting and #MuslimLivesMatter were trending on Twitter, with many claiming the crimes would have garnered more attention had the gunman been a Muslim and the victims white.
"Muslims only newsworthy when behind a gun. Not in front (of) it," read one post which reflected the sentiments of many.
By early Wednesday, however, the story was among the top national headlines and featuring prominently on websites including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
Investigators were piecing together a picture of the alleged gunman, who turned himself in shortly after the shootings.
A Facebook page believed to belong to Hicks showed dozens of anti-religious posts, including one calling himself an "anti-theist," saying he has a "conscientious objection to religion", and others denouncing Christianity, Mormonism and Islam.
His page showed a photo of a loaded revolver, alongside a video of a puppy ...
One post read: "I'm not an atheist because I'm ignorant of the reality of religious scripture. I'm an atheist because religious scripture is ignorant of reality.
"Given the enormous harm that your religion has done in this world, I'd say that I have not only a right, but a duty, to insult it."
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