You don't know what a brother means until you lose him.
And for me, like, I think brother is synonymous with best friend.
The biggest thing about this was that like,
everybody was able to see themselves
in these people.
They each lived a life that was so like,
I guess, pure or just like kind.
That's just what they were about.
I called my mom, and she's frantic.
She's like, "Have you heard from your brother?" I was like, "No."
I checked Twitter, just to kind of get the most up-to-date information,
and I see, “Shooting on Summerwalk Circle.”
I was like, man, that's where my brother lives.
I try calling. He doesn't answer. I was like, well, I gotta head over.
I show up, and my dad is there.
My dad's yelling. He's like, “Tell me anything. Is my son killed? Is he OK?”
You hear this in the video. You hear screams. You hear a gunshot.
The gun was point-blank to her hijab.
He goes into the bedroom where Razan is on her knees begging, "Please don't shoot."
He puts the gun to her hijab at point-blank and shoots her.
And then, on the way out, as the phone fell and is facing up, filming up,
you see him stand over my brother again and shoot him in the mouth.
You tell me that happens over a parking dispute, and you tell me that that's what that narrative is about.
That is not the same as somebody in the parking lot arguing over a spot and arguing back-and-forth.
That is not the same.
It's so incredibly frustrating. It's frustrating for us.
It's frustrating for Muslim women who, up until this day,
still feel the need to take off their hijab because they feel targeted.
When you're young, growing up in this country, man, it's like so much easier
for youth to just be like, "Muslim, what's that? I'm not a Muslim."
Just so they can get by.
Those are the symptoms of where our country is.
That's the rhetoric on the news.
That's the decisiveness within our politics.
I'm born here. My brother is buried here.
Our names belong to this country now more than anybody else. We all have an equal right to this country.
My brother worked on planning a dental relief trip to the Turkish border with Syria to help refugees.
He called it, Project Refugee Smiles.
He was at [$16,000] of $20,000 in his live campaign the day he was murdered.
And the video of him basically asking for folks to donate to help Syrian refugees went viral.
And people supported that up to $600,000.
That summer when we went on the trip,
we turned that into the Our Three Winners endowment
to continue doing the work that he wanted to do every year.
My mom sent me a screenshot of a tweet my brother had tweeted,
"I have a dream that, one day, we'll have a structured and organized community,
have a voice and help the youth with their projects."
So, we took that and we were like, alright, like it's something that I was familiar with and
came up with a business model that basically offers fiscal sponsorship and mentorship to programs.
We ended up calling that house The Light House
because my brother's name, Deah, translates from Arabic to English as meaning light.
And the quote that is wrapped around the porch right now,
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that."
So that quote also means so much to how we chose to respond to this incident.
Their last known actions were these exact things,
whether it's dental relief or if it was feeding the homeless or working on projects for social justice.
And, I think there's nothing better than bringing the community out from its hole.
Come out, manifest sadness into something that is going bring light into the world.
I don't think the things that happen to us are a choice,
but I think the way we respond to things is a choice.
I do feel sadness and I let sadness - You know, I cry because that's important.
Like I feel the sadness. I don't run away from that. But I also choose happiness.