During his March 24 probable cause hearing, Mohammed Taheri-azar quietly read the Koran.
Only weeks earlier, around noon March 3, the alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill drove a rented silver Jeep Grand Cherokee through the Pit, a popular gathering spot at UNC. He struck nine people.
At the hearing, Judge Joe Buckner found probable cause for 18 felony charges against Taheri-azar.
The charges included nine counts of attempted first-degree murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and four counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
A police investigator read the typed letter written to the police by Taheri-azar, a 22-year-old native of Iran, at the hearing in Orange County District Court.
In the letter, he admitted he wanted to shoot people rather than run over them with the Jeep.
"I would instead use a handgun to murder the citizens and residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but the process of receiving a permit for a handgun in this city is highly restrictive and out of my reach at present, most likely due to my foreign nationality," Taheri-azar's letter read.
District Attorney Jim Woodall called six witnesses during the hearing: UNC freshman Alex Slater, who was hit by the car; UNC senior Bernard Holloway; UNC sophomore Brian Seymour; UNC freshman Jennifer Bellis, who witnessed the incident; Ross Barbee, the patrol officer who first responded; and Matthew Dodson, the investigating officer from the university's Department of Public Safety.
After the two-hour hearing, the driver's older sister, Laila Taheri-azar, read a statement on behalf of the family.
She was crying while she told reporters her brother has always been a "kind, gentle and pure soul," who loved animals, fishing, camping and race cars.
Laila Taheri-azar wore her brother's class ring and told reporters he was dedicated to his studies and applying to graduate schools.
The letter he wrote, however, stated that Taheri-azar was not interested in academia.
"I do not wish to pursue my career as a student any further, because I have no desire to amass the impermanent and temporary fame and material wealth that this world has to offer," the letter read. "However, I made the decision to continue my studies and graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill so that the world will know that Allah's servants are very intelligent."
In his interview with Dodson, Taheri-azar said he had been planning the attack for several months and hoped to succeed in killing people.
According to the letter, he wanted "to take the lives of as many Americans and American sympathizers as I can in order to punish the United States for their immoral actions around the world."
Dodson testified that four victims received minor bruises or scrapes. Two others had broken arms, and one suffered a head injury that required four or five stitches. Another victim had a broken ankle.
Taheri-azar drove over one victim's hand, breaking her finger. She also sustained bruising on her legs.
Duke senior Bilal Aijazi, vice president of the Muslim Students Association, said the incident has been condemned by local and national Muslim associations.
"The justifications that he is using are really placing a lot of blame on religion, as opposed to the individual," Aijazi explained. "There has been a lot of fallout. We are trying to distance ourselves from this individual."
Taheri-azar was not a member of the UNC Muslim Students Association.
"He was a member of the community in that he is Muslim, but nothing beyond that," Aijazi said.
Woodall said the case will now go before a grand jury.
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