Palestinian students shot in Vermont say the suspect waited for and targeted them

It took Hisham Awartani some time to realize he'd been shot after falling to the ground during a walk near his grandmother's house with two friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad.

"I didn’t quite process the fact until I, like, looked at my phone and I saw my phone had blood on it," said Awartani, who along with Abdalhamid, spoke exclusively with NBC News about that night. "I was like, 'Oh, I’ve been shot.'"

But having grown up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinians often face violence and aggression, it came as no surprise to the 20-year-old U.S. students that something like this would happen to them.