6-year-old Muslim boy fatally stabbed by Chicago landlord in hate crime, sheriff says

July 27, 2024

For the past two years, relatives recalled, Joseph Czuba was kind to the Palestinian mother and her young son who were renting part of his house in Plainfield, Ill., about a half-hour outside of Chicago.

The 71-year-old landlord built the boy a treehouse, let him use a swimming pool and bought him toys, the child’s relatives said. But over the past few days, according to the family, “something changed,” and Czuba had grown hostile to his Arab tenants.

On Saturday, a week after Hamas militants launched a devastating attack on Israel, Czuba allegedly knocked on the Palestinian family’s door just after 11 a.m. When the mother, Hanaan Shahin, answered, Czuba assaulted her with a serrated military-style knife while yelling anti-Muslim statements, forcing her to run to the bathroom to call 911, according to local authorities and the family’s statements at a news conference on Sunday.

When Shahin emerged from the bathroom after calling police, according to the accounts, she found Czuba attacking her 6-year-old son, Wadea Alfayoumi, who later died of his wounds. He had been stabbed 26 times, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Shahin, 32, was stabbed at least a dozen times and remains hospitalized in serious condition, the family said.

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Czuba was charged with one count each of first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery, and two counts related to hate crimes, according to the sheriff’s office.

“Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslims and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” the statement said.

When authorities arrived, Czuba was sitting upright outside on the ground near the driveway of the residence with a laceration to his forehead, according to the sheriff’s office. He was taken to a hospital for treatment but did not make any statements to detectives when later questioned, the sheriff’s office added.

The FBI in Chicago, the Department of Justice’s civil rights division and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois are investigating the attack, the FBI said in a statement Monday.

“Federal authorities continue to work closely with local officials from Will County Sheriff’s Office and Will County State’s Attorney’s Office,” the statement said. “As this is an ongoing investigation, we are not able to comment further at this time.”

President Biden said in a statement that he was “sickened” to hear of the deadly attack in Illinois, which “stands against our fundamental values: freedom from fear for how we pray, what we believe, and who we are.”

“The child’s Palestinian Muslim family came to America seeking what we all seek — a refuge to live, learn, and pray in peace,” the White House statement said, calling for Americans to “reject Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry and hatred.”

A solemn crowd gathered Monday afternoon at a mosque in suburban Chicago for Alfayoumi’s funeral. Mourners waved Palestinian flags, and an uncle who did not give his name spoke of the boy’s kindness and love of games.

The boy’s father, Odai Alfayoumi, said in Arabic that children are paying the price for a conflict in which they don’t even understand the politics.

“It’s not a Hamas issue or a Gaza issue. This is a world issue,” he said.

Before the service, speakers implored elected officials and members of the news media to employ greater caution, compassion and clarity in the days ahead because their roles are pivotal in fostering an environment that can give way to hate crimes. Speakers demanded an apology from President Biden for claiming to have seen photos of alleged Hamas-driven atrocities that his administration later clarified he had not seen.

“There’s more than just a man that stabbed a 6-year-old boy here,” Imam Omar Suleiman said. “I want you to think about what was in his head. What type of hate has to be manufactured in the head of a man for him to stand over a 6-year-old boy and stab him 26 times?”

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“Have we not learned anything from 9/11?” Suleiman continued. “Do we really want to live those dark years again?”

“No child should ever have to pay for the crimes — or the manufactured image of a criminal — on the part of anybody else,” Suleiman said.

The attack came a week after Hamas militants raided communities in southern Israel, killing at least 1,400 people there and injuring more than 3,842, authorities said. Palestinian officials said 2,670 people in Gaza have been killed and 9,600 wounded after Israel began a bombing campaign ahead of an expected ground invasion.

The brutality of the latest outbreak of warfare has unleashed language from all sides that is so hateful and dehumanizing that it has shocked even longtime observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. International peace activists repeatedly have warned that the ugly rhetoric could inspire violent retaliations in the United States, citing dark precedents such as the targeting of Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or the increase in antisemitic incidents after previous flare-ups involving Israel.

In the past few days, Jewish and Muslim advocacy groups have documented vandalism or bomb threats at synagogues and mosques, along with hateful messages and swastikas scrawled in their communities. Arab and Muslim rights groups say they have fielded calls from people reporting that they have been fired or silenced for expressing pro-Palestinian views.

The stabbing death of a child sounded like an unthinkable escalation, their worst fears come true. Activists and politicians issued statements demanding an end to the conflict and to the dangerous language they say finds resonance with violent, unstable people.

“This atmosphere has created a monster out of a normal man who once built a treehouse,” said Ahmed Rehab of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group that arranged a news conference Sunday with the boy’s father and other relatives.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) issued a statement calling the taking of a child’s life in the name of bigotry “nothing short of evil.”

“Wadea should be heading to school in the morning,” Pritzker’s statement said. “Instead, his parents will wake up without their son. This wasn’t just a murder — it was a hate crime.”

Authorities gave few details about Czuba. As news of his arrest spread, people who live nearby said in community forums on Facebook that Czuba had long alarmed residents with yard signs telegraphing his “extreme” views. One woman wrote that she had alerted local officials about the “unhinged” man. The Post contacted the woman seeking details but did not receive an immediate reply.

The Palestinian tenants had seen the signs but did not understand their symbolism and had not experienced the landlord’s extremist side until recently, said Yousef Hannon, an uncle and family spokesman who was sitting with the slain child’s father, Odai Alfayoumi, during a phone interview.

Wadea was born in the United States to Palestinian parents who moved here more than a decade ago and have since divorced. The extended family, which has roots in both the West Bank and Gaza, already was reeling this week from the perils faced by relatives who are fleeing the Israeli siege and retaliatory strikes that followed the Hamas-led attack. Hannon said they never imagined that the tentacles of war would stretch all the way to the Chicago suburbs.

What little the family knows about the attack comes from the police and text messages from the boy’s mother, Shahin, whom they say they haven’t been allowed to visit yet in the hospital.

In Arabic-language text messages to the boy’s father right after the attack, the family said, she wrote that Czuba had knocked on the door. When she answered, she texted, he choked her and then tried to stab her while yelling words to the effect of, “You Muslims must die.”

Grief-stricken family members were gathered around Odai Alfayoumi late Sunday, making arrangements for the child’s funeral Monday at a local mosque. The father spoke quietly in the background but said he was too broken up to be interviewed.

“He can’t accept the fact that he lost his son,” Hannon said. His voice cracked and he began to sob. “It’s very hard for a father to lose a son. Very hard.”

Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.

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