28-02-2025
Illinois man convicted in murder of Muslim boy, wounding of his mother
Feb. 28 (UPI) -- An Illinois landlord accused of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old boy and attacking his mother because of their Muslim faith in 2023 was convicted of all eight charges, including first-degree murder Friday.
In Joliet, Ill., a jury deliberated for less than two hours and found Joseph Czuba, 73, guilty of the murder charge, attempted murder, aggravated battery and hate crimes. Czuba did not testify at his trial.
Wadee Alfayoumi's father, Odai, spoke to the media after the verdict.
"I don't know if I should be pleased or upset, if I should be crying or laughing," he said through a translator during a press briefing with the Chicago office of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, the U.S.'s largest Muslim civil rights organization. "People are telling me to smile. Maybe if I were one of you, I would be smiling. But I'm the father of the child, and I've lost the child."
On Oct. 14, 2023, Wadee Alfayoumi was fatally stabbed 26 times, and his mother, Hanan Shaheen, survived after being stabbed more than 12 times at their home in Plainfield Township, about 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago.
They rented two rooms from Czuba and his then-wife, Mary Connor, 64. They were married for 30 years.
Hanan Shaheen, 33, testified that she didn't have any issues with Czuba until after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
She said the couple were aware that she is Muslim and of Palestinian descent before they agreed to rent the rooms two years earlier.
Sheehan and Mary Connor, who also testified, said he began speaking hatefully about Muslims. Shaheen said Czuba told her "your people" are killing Jewish people and babies in Israel, that Muslims were not welcome in his home and that she needed to move out.
"I told him, 'Pray for peace,'" Shaheen testified.
Shaheen said Czuba forced his way into her room, held her down, stabbed her with a knife and tried to break her teeth, as her son, Wadee, watched from a corner of the room. She was able to grab the knife and stab Czuba with it before he seized it from her.
When she went into a bathroom to call 911, Czuba moved on to Wadee.
She said she could hear him shouting, "Oh no, stop!"
First responders found a knife was still lodged in Wadee's body when they arrived. The knife had a 7-inch blade, which prosecutors held up several times during closing arguments.
"This happened because this defendant was afraid that a war that had started on Oct. 7, 2023, a half a world away in the Middle East, was going to come to his doorstep," prosecutor Michael Fitzgerald, a Will County assistant state's attorney, told jurors in his opening statement. "This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslim."
George Lenard, one of Czuba's attorneys, during his closing argument, invoked O.J. Simpson's trial attorney Johnnie Cochran, telling jurors that there had been a rush to judgment in Czuba's case.
"You know this is a half-baked case that the prosecution is giving you," he said.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said in a statement: "Today's verdict delivers a measure of justice for Wadee AlFayoumi's family and sends a clear message that hate-fueled violence has no place here. We will never accept nor forget that a six-year-old child lost his life because of dangerous anti-Palestinian rhetoric. ... We must prevent other families from enduring similar loss, and we call on all communities to unite against the false narratives that fuel hate crimes."
The U.S. Justice Department launched a hate crime investigation one week after the attack but no charges have been filed yet.
A wrongful death suit against Czuba and his ex-wife is pending.
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution to honor Wadea.
