A man who allegedly shot three college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont, has been arrested and stared blankly in his mugshot.

James Eaton, 48, gazed into a webcam camera, stated his name and pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted second-degree murder in his court arraignment on Monday morning.

Eaten was taken into custody on Sunday afternoon after cops found him in the area where the shooting occurred on Saturday night.

The victims, all aged 20, have been identified by relatives as Brown University junior Hisham Awartani, Haverford College student Kinnan Abdalhamid and Trinity College student Tahseen Ahmed, according to the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

Eaton is accused of opening fire ‘without speaking’ on the three students as they walked on a street before dinner and then fleeing, according to the Burlington Police Department. The students were rushed to the University of Vermont Medical Center.

Two of the students were shot in the torso and the third in the lower extremities. As of the weekend, two were in stable condition while the third had ‘much more serious injuries’, police said.

The victims were wearing Palestinian neck scarves, keffiyahs, and were speaking Arabic when they were gunned down, leading authorities to say it was a possible hate crime. Two of the students are American citizens and the third is a legal resident.

A lawyer for the victim’s families, Abed Ayoub, said he believes the trio were targeted because two of them wore keffiyahs.

‘The suspect walked up to them and shot them. They weren’t robbed, they weren’t mugged,’ Ayoub told CNN. ‘It was a targeted shooting and a targeted crime.’

A motive has not yet been determined.

‘In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,’ stated Burlington police Chief Jon Murad on Sunday.

‘The fact is that we don’t yet know as much as we want to right now. But I urge the public to avoid making conclusions based on statements from uninvolved parties who know even less.’

After Monday’s hearing, Eaton’s lawyer, Margaret Jansch, said it was ‘premature to speculate’ on a possible hate crime and said that ‘anything (Eaton) may have said to us we cannot disclose’.

The Vermont-New Hampshire chapter of Jewish Voice For Peace, which is calling for the Israel-Hamas war to end, stated they were ‘appalled by the shooting’.

‘We are in solidarity with the students, their families and all those affected by this clear act of hate,’ stated the group on Sunday. ‘And we are committed to creating a Vermont that is safe and welcoming for all.’

Eaton was arraigned about a month after landlord Joseph Czuba appeared defiantin court and pleaded not guilty to murdering a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy in an Illinois suburb.

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