An Illinois man has been convicted of murder and hate crime charges in the 2023 stabbing death of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy.
Wadee Alfayoumi was stabbed 26 times and his mother more than a dozen times during an attack inside their Plainfield, Illinois, home on October 14, 2023.
Their landlord, 73-year-old Joseph Czuba, was charged with multiple murders, attempted murder, aggravated battery, and hate crimes. He pleaded not guilty.
Authorities said he targeted his tenants because they were Muslim and in response to the war between Israel and Hamas, which had recently erupted following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
A Will County jury found Czuba guilty on all counts.
Jurors began deliberating around noon Friday and reached their verdict less than two hours later.
Following the verdict, Wadee’s father, Odai Alfyoumi, expressed gratitude to those who had supported him.
“I don’t know if I should be pleased or upset, crying or laughing,” he said through a translator during a press briefing at the Council of American-Islamic Relations’ Chicago office, the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States.
“Everyone is telling me to smile. Maybe if I were one of you, I’d smile. But I am the child’s father, and I have lost him,” he said.
He additionally asked for prayers that “this senseless loss is the last that we will see, that no child would suffer what my beloved had to go through.”
CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab expressed satisfaction with the verdict, calling it a “very clear-cut case.”
“This is a case that shook up the Muslim community, the Palestinian community, and really Chicago and Illinois and the nation, maybe even the world at large,” Rehab told the Tribune.
“This is one of the worst hate crimes that have been committed in recent memory that targeted an innocent 6-year-old boy, a kindergartner, and his mother.”
The child’s mother, Hanan Shaheen, was the first to testify in the week-long trial.
She claimed Czuba attacked her first with a knife, stabbing her multiple times and saying, “You devil Muslim, you must die,” as her son watched, according to Chicago ABC station WLS.
She testified that she called 911 from the bathroom when he appeared to leave, but then she heard her son scream, according to WLS.
“I started hearing my son screaming, screaming, screaming, ‘Oh no, stop,'” Shaheen told WLS.
According to WLS, he also stated that he and his wife were “afraid for their lives” and that the family was “like infested rats.”
Czuba and his wife rented a portion of their Plainfield home to the mother and son for two years.
According to The Associated Press, Czuba’s now-ex-wife testified for prosecutors that he became withdrawn in the days following the war and wanted the family to leave immediately, despite her desire to give them 30 days’ notice.
Czuba did not take the stand, giving up his right to testify.
His defense attorneys told jurors at the start of the trial that there were flaws in the state’s case and urged them to “go beyond the emotions to carefully examine the evidence,” according to the Associated Press.
