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US President Barack Obama has issued a statement on the “brutal and outrageous” shooting of three young Muslims in Chapel Hill, NC, offering condolences and calling for unity, Sputnik reported.

In his statement the President said that the FBI had opened an investigation into “whether federal laws were violated” and cited the presence of over 5,000 mourners at the students’ funeral Thursday as evidence that “we are all one American family.”

At the end of his statement, President Obama quoted Abu-Salha, from a conversation she had recorded for the Storycorps oral history project a few months before her death, in which she called her life in America “a blessing.”

“It doesn’t matter where you come from. There’s so many different people from so many different places, of different backgrounds and religions – but here, we’re all one.”

On Wednesday, the White House said they had “no specific reaction” to the shootings, but the relative silence about the shootings from mainstream media and the President came under fire from community leaders and media outlets.

Obama’s statement comes the day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticized Obama’s lack of a response to perceived anti-Muslim violence in a speech he made during a state visit to Mexico.

Deah Shaddy Barakat, a 23-year-old dental student, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were shot by Craig Hicks, 46, a neighbor of the students who had been known to make anti-Muslim remarks.