JOLIET, Illinois: A suburban Chicago landlord took a knife from a belt holder and attacked a Palestinian American woman before fatally stabbing her young son 26 times, prosecutors alleged Tuesday during opening statements in the trial for a 2023 murder and hate crime.
Joseph Czuba, 73, is charged in the death of six-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of Hanan Shaheen on Oct. 14, 2023. Authorities said the family was targeted because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas that erupted on Oct. 7, 2023 with a Hamas attack on southern Israel.
Prosecutor Michael Fitzgerald, a Will County assistant state’s attorney, told jurors they’d hear an emotional 911 call, detailed witness testimony, along with police footage and explicit crime scene photos as he described each of the stab wounds to the boy’s body.
Joseph Czuba, 71, stands before Circuit Judge Dave Carlson for his arraignment at the Will County, Ill., courthouse, Oct. 30, 2023, in Joliet, Ill. (AP)
“He could not escape,” Fitzgerald said facing jurors. “If it wasn’t enough that this defendant killed that little boy, he left the knife in the little boy’s body.”
Czuba has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder and other charges. He wore a suit and tie to court, his greying hair falling past his shoulders. He did not speak as he watched the proceedings.
Will County Public Defender Kylie Blatti urged jurors to consider each piece of evidence carefully because key parts were missing.
“Go beyond the emotions to carefully examine the evidence,” Blatti said during opening statements. “It is easy to get lost in the horror of those images.”
The family had been renting two rooms from Czuba and his wife, who also lived at the home where the murder happened in suburban Plainfield, nearly 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Chicago.
Shaheen was the first witness and recounted the events leading up to the attack. She said they had not previously had any issues in the two years they had rented from the Czubas. They shared a kitchen and living room with the Czubas in the home.
After the start of the war Czuba told her that they had to move out because Muslims were not welcome. She urged him to “Pray for peace.” Later, he confronted Shaheen and attacked her, holding her down, stabbing her and trying to break her teeth.
“He told me ‘You, as a Muslim, must die,” said Shaheen, who mainly testified in English but had an Arabic translator on standby in her primary language. She occasionally turned to the translator for clarification on questions or to translate for her.
After the attack, Shaheen said was scared and locked herself in the bathroom, noting blood all over her body and the room. She called 911 when she heard her son screaming in another room.
“The landlord is killing me and my baby!” she screamed to the dispatcher multiple times, according to a recording of the call played in court. “He’s killing my baby in other room!”
Yelling could be heard on the background. As the roughly 15-minute recording played in court, Shaheen put her head down, clutching a tissue paper in her hand.
The boy — whose name was initially spelled Wadea Al-Fayoume by authorities — was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Shaheen had more than a dozen stab wounds and it took her weeks to recover.
The attack on the family in Plainfield renewed fears of anti-Muslim discrimination in the Chicago area’s large and established Palestinian community. The proceedings also come amid rising hostility against Muslims and Palestinians in the US since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.
Hundreds attended the boy’s janazah, or funeral service, where the boy was remembered as kind and into sports and Legos.
Separately, the father of the boy, who is divorced from Shaheen and did not live at the home, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit. He attended the court proceedings Tuesday along with an uncle.
Shaheen has also retained prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who said she would not talk to reporters during the trial, which is expected to last about a week.
“Hanan Shaheen continues the unimaginable fight for justice for Wadee,” he said in a statement. “We have confidence in the prosecution’s efforts to earn justice for Wadee and Hanan.”
