A Vermont man accused of shooting three students of Palestinian descent in a possible hate crime this weekend is a FINRA-registered broker and financial advisor with previous stints at TD Ameritrade and Edward Jones.
Jason J. Eaton was arrested on Sunday by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and accused of shooting the three students in Vermont.
Eaton first entered the industry in 2002, working at Equity Services for one year, before joining broker/dealer Cadaret, Grant & Co. from 2006 through 2012. Eaton later worked at Edward Jones from 2018 to 2019, with another stint at TD Ameritrade from May 2019 through March 2021, according to his BrokerCheck profile.
Earlier this year, he joined Cuso Financial Services, a broker/dealer working with bank or credit union-based financial advisors. Cuso is owned by Atria, according to the firm’s website.
"Jason Eaton worked less than a year at CUSO Financial and his employment had been terminated on November 8, 2023," a company spokesperson told WealthManagement.com. "We are horrified by the shooting and are cooperating with law enforcement as they investigate."
Eaton’s history in the financial services space was first reported by VICE News.
According to VICE, Eaton had a profile on X (formerly known as Twitter), in which he described himself as a “radical citizen” patrolling “demockracy and crapitalism for oathcreepers,” with a banner image proclaiming that “Libertarians want trans furrys (sic) to be able to protect their cannabis farms with unregistered machine guns.”
VICE described his archived Twitter account as more restrained in comparison, which also included a link to a Substack which Eaton allegedly described as the “wandering ramblings of a reformed broker on the ADHD/ASD spectrum."
The three victims were identified as Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmad, all 20 years old and students enrolled in Brown University, Haverford College and Trinity College, according to VICE, which reported the three students were in Burlington, Vt. for Thanksgiving with Awartani’s grandmother.
On Sunday evening, Eaton allegedly confronted the three men near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington and shot at them four times without speaking before he fled. All three were struck, with two reported in stable condition and one of the students facing “much more serious injuries.”
Police have not determined a motive, but did note two of the victims were wearing keffiyehs when they were shot.