A jury in the suburb in Chicago condemned a man on Friday for murder and hate crimes for the fatal first first of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy who lived on his property. The murder, which took place in 2023, was fueled by anti-Muslim hatred, the authorities said.
The accused, Joseph M. Czuba, 73, is available when he is convicted.
The attack on Wade Alfayoumi, a kindergarten gardener who loved Legos and football, drawn international attention and let many members of Illinois’ great Palestinian and Muslim communities frighten and angry. Some leaders in these communities combined the attack with the rhetoric used by some American politicians and media personalities, of which they said they were stimulated in the Palestinians.
Wade and his mother Hanan Shaheen, who was wounded in the attack, had lived about 40 miles southwest of Chicago for two years in rented rooms in Mr. Czubas Haus in Plainfield Township, Illinois.
After the violence in the Middle East started, Ms. Shaheen told the jury, the relationship with her landlord suddenly. She said Mr. Czuba made hateful statements about Muslims and asked that Ms. Shaheen and her little son move out.
“I told him:” Pray for peace, “said Ms. Shaheen, who is Muslim and Palestinian American.
A few days later, she said, knocked on Mr. Czuba to her bedroom door and began to stab her with a knife, bleeding her bleeding out of her chest, back and head. After withdrawing into a bathroom to call 911, she said that Mr. Czuba had attacked Wadee who had just celebrated his birthday. Ms. Shaheen remembered her son who screamed: “Stop it! Oh no! “
“I was sitting on the floor and spoke to the police and had the feeling that I die every second,” said Ms. Shaheen this week during Mr. Czuba’s court proceedings.
In court documents, the prosecutors described Mr. Czuba as angry, unpredictable, paranoid and violent. They said that he had heard radio reporting on the conflict in the Middle East and was increasingly concerned that he was in personal danger because of his tenants.
“This happened because the accused feared that a war that began on October 7, 2023 – half a world away in the Middle East – would come to his front door,” said Michael Fitzgerald, prosecutor.
During the final arguments, George Lenard, a lawyer of Mr. Czuba, spoke skepticism about the quality of the examination and the strength of the evidence.
“There is no doubt that there was a hurry in this case,” Lenard told the jury. “From the time when the 911 call entered, this case was solved.”
Mary Connor, who ended her marriage to Mr. Czuba months after the Stabbings in 2023, said about the witness stand that Ms. Shaheen and her son were a model tenant and her husband never had a problem with them up to the days after Hamas’s attack. At that time, she said, Mr. Czuba was withdrawn more and convinced that Ms. Shaheen was a danger.
“He said:” Hanan has to move because her friends could harm us, “said Ms. Connor. I immediately said: ‘Joe, Hanan has never had someone in our house. She has never had a guest.'”
The Chicago region has a large Palestinian American community, including a suburban area with many Arab restaurants and shops, which some refer to as Little Palestine.
The investigators said that Wade, whose name was sometimes translated as Wadea al-Fayoule, was stabbed 26 times and declared dead in a hospital. Ms. Shaheen, who was 32 years old at the time, was stabbed more than a dozen times and was taken to the hospital in a serious condition.
In court, Ms. Shaheen answered questions from prosecutors about photos of her bloody face, which were taken in the hospital, and she described when she struck back against Mr. Czuba, at one point the knife from him and stabbed him before he confiscated the weapon of her.
(Tagstotranslate) Palestinian Americans
