The headline reads:
“Kentucky man accused of killing two black victims indicted on federal hate crime charges.”
Probably the victims were not indicted, either before or after they were murdered.
News headlines are tricky. It’s traditional for the editors to leave words out. Why? I don’t know. Maybe by omitting “a” and “the” and “has been” and the like, they save a little space, which enables them to make the headline a bit bigger? I’m speculating here.
Certainly it would be less dramatic for this headline to read: “A Kentucky man, accused of killing two black victims, has been indicted on federal hate crime charges.”
But at least this way, those two black people, already victims, wouldn’t also suffer the indignity of an indictment.
(Alternative headline suggestion: “Accused of killing two black victims, Kentucky man indicted on federal hate crime charges.”)
Or – “Kentucky man accused of killing two black victims IS indicted on federal hate crime charges” … the difference in number between “man” and “victims” helps to clarify which noun the verb connects to … but newspapers do love truncating the verbs – not sure why! An interesting post on this topic: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/7257/why-do-newspaper-headlines-use-strange-syntax-rules
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