Richard Antoun, a professor of anthropology at Binghamton University in Vestal, N.Y., was fatally stabbed by a student on Dec. 4. He was 77.
Antoun was stabbed four times with a six-inch kitchen knife inside a science building on campus. He was immediately rushed to the Wilson Hospital in nearby Johnson City and died of his injuries shortly thereafter.
Police captured a suspect, a Binghamton graduate student named Abdulsalam al-Zahrani, who immediately confessed to the crime.
“Yeah, I just stabbed him,” al-Zahrani is reported to have told police upon being questioned. Police do not yet know the motive but immediately dispelled the prevailing theory of the stabbing being a hate crime or religiously motivated.
“There is no indication of religious or ethnic motivation,” said Gerald Mollen, the district attorney of Broome county. Both al-Zahrani and Antoun were scholars of Middle Eastern religions.
