After prosecutors announced Monday that they intend to seek the death penalty for Craig Hicks, the 46-year-old who shot and killed three Muslim students in an apartment near UNC-Chapel Hill, new details of the shooter's obsessive nature emerge.

Police have said that shooting may have been motivated by an ongoing parking dispute. According to police and family, Hicks would stand watch over the apartment complex where he lived and keep detailed notes—even taking photos—of cars coming and going, and where the couple parked.

Hicks shot and killed Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife, Yusor Mohammad, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, last month in the couple's apartment. The bloody crime scene is described in police records obtained by BuzzFeed:

When the officers arrived at the scene, a witness hiding behind a building ran at them and pointed toward Barakat and Mohammad's apartment. She told them that her "friend was over there bleeding."

Inside the apartment, officers first found Barakat who was "bleeding from the head and showed no signs of life," according to the warrant.

The police found one female body in the kitchen near the dishwasher and another female lying in the doorway, near the kitchen. Both women showed no signs of life.

A witness told police that after he heard shots, he noticed "a white male, approximately his mid-forties, wearing a beard and with a balding spot on the top of his head, wearing a gold Carhart coat, walking fast from the back of the apartment building."

A concrete motive in the case has remained elusive so far, but a few primary arguments have taken hold: That Hicks' fixation over the complex's parking spots boiled over; that Hicks, a staunch atheist whose Facebook is rife with anti-religious sentiment, killed the students for their religion; or some combination of the two.

Hicks' wife, Karen, the New York Times reports, apparently told her lawyer that her husband would stare from the couple's second-story window, "obsessing over neighbors' parties, patterns, and parking." (The couple have not spoken since the day of the shooting, when he apparently called and told her, "This is not your fault, and have a good life.") From the Times:

He was undeniably obsessed with parking. Each unit got permits for up to two cars, but only one assigned spot. Building 20 had 13 spaces. Mr. Barakat and Ms. Abu-Salha were assigned space 20B. The next, 20C, belonged to Mrs. Hicks. Five spaces in the middle were unassigned and could be used for extra cars. Drivers also regularly parked on the side street.

The housing association allowed residents to have improperly parked cars towed. But Mr. Hicks abused this power until the housing association asked him to stop, his wife's lawyer said. According to a police search warrant, he kept "pictures and detailed notes on parking activity" on his computer.

But family and friends of the students, citing incidents preceding the shooting, maintain that the couple and Abu-Salha's sister were killed for their religion and appearance, and that Hicks became fixated on the couple's behavior.

In one such instance, Hicks knocked at the couple's door to complain about the noise they were making (they playing the board game Risk), and reportedly lifted his shirt to revealed a gun holstered to his belt.

And then in January, the Times reports, Abu-Salha texted her husband, "I just got yelled at for it by that crazy neighbor who said we are only allowed two spots," the night the couple had planned a dinner party. Barakat apparently went so far as to print out maps of the apartment complex's parking spots, highlighting their available spaces, and sending photocopies to friends and family.

And the Abu-Salhas father, Mohammed, told MSNBC, "My daughter, Yusor, complained and she told us she felt that man hated them for the way they looked and the Muslim garb they wore. She felt the heat has risen after she moved into the apartment and her friends came to visit and most of them wore Muslim attire. So she was worried about that."

[Image via WRAL]