A 71-year-old man in Plainfield, Illinois, has been charged with murder and a hate crime after allegedly stabbing a child and his mother because they were Muslims.
“Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” the Will county sheriff’s office said.
Six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume was killed and his mother seriously wounded in the attack. Police said they responded to an emergency call made by a 32-year-old woman who alleged her landlord had attacked her with a knife.
According to text messages sent by the mother to the father of the boy, which were shared with Cair International, the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the US, when the woman opened the door the landlord attempted to choke her, then stabbed her, yelling: “You Muslims must die!”
The mother ran to the bathroom to call 911 and emerged to find that the man had stabbed her son. “It all happened in seconds,” the woman texted, according to Cair.
Officers found the 71-year-old suspect sitting upright on the ground near the home’s driveway. Inside were the two stabbing victims, a 32-year-old woman and a six-year-old boy who each suffered more than a dozen stab wounds to their chest, torso and arms.
The suspect was identified as 71-year-old Joseph M Czuba and police said he was the property’s landlord.
“Joseph Czuba did not make any statements to detectives regarding his involvement in this heinous attack. Despite the suspect not providing a statement to detectives, personnel were able to gather enough information through interviews and evidence to formally charge Joseph Czuba with numerous criminal offenses,” said the sheriff’s office in a statement.
Czuba was charged with murder, two counts of hate crimes and other offenses.
Joe Biden said he was “shocked and sickened” by the attack. “The child’s Palestinian Muslim family came to America seeking what we all seek – a refuge to live, learn and pray in peace,” the president said. “This horrific act of hate has no place in America, and stands against our fundamental values: freedom from fear for how we pray, what we believe and who we are.”
The child was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead, and the woman is hospitalized in serious condition.
Cair said in a statement on social media: “We are shocked and disturbed to learn that a landlord in Chicago expressing anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian views broke into a Muslim family’s apartment and attacked them with a knife, injuring the mother and killing her 6-year-old son, Wadea Al-Fayoume.”
We are shocked and disturbed to learn that a landlord in Chicago expressing anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian views broke into a Muslim family's apartment and attacked them with a knife, injuring the mother and killing her 6-year-old son, Wadea Al-Fayoume. @cairchicago will hold a… pic.twitter.com/N0ILuevq4n
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 15, 2023
The group held a news conference on Sunday, describing Wadea as a boy who loved his family, soccer and basketball. Wadea had turned six years old a few weeks before, said Ahmed Rehab, the Cair executive director.
“He paid the price for the atmosphere of hate that we are seeing here in the United States,” Rehab said.
According to Rehab, Czuba was incensed by the news coming out of Israel and previously had had a good relationship with the family, even building a treehouse for Wadea, bringing him toys and allowing him to swim in a makeshift pool. “The family had no reason to suspect what was to occur,” Rehab said.
The Illinois congressman Abdelnasser Rashid, who attended the Cair news conference, said: “We need to understand that the killing of this six-year-old boy was directly connected to what’s happening in Israel and Palestine. If we want to see these attacks stop, and see any semblance of justice we have to call out not just this heinous crime, but call for a ceasefire and deescalation and forge a path forward for peace in Israel and Palestine based on humanity and based on human rights.”
