The police said the boy and his mother were targeted by their American landlord due to their Muslim identity and the ongoing conflict involving Hamas and Israel
ILLINOIS — An American landlord identified as 71-year-old Joseph Czuba brutally stabbed a 6-year-old Palestinian boy and his mother who were tenants in his home in Plainfield, Illinois in the United States.
Police said in Saturday’s incident, the accused barged into the house and launched a vicious attack on the mother-son duo, screaming “You Muslims must die.”
The child was stabbed 26 times and died at the hospital. His 32-year-old mother, who was also seriously wounded, is currently undergoing treatment. The autopsy report revealed that the boy was stabbed with a large military-style knife. The woman too had more than a dozen stab wounds on her body.
The police, who linked the attack to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, revealed that the accused was arrested on Sunday and charged with murder and hate crimes.
The Will County Sheriff’s Office took to social media to inform, “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 Israel.”
The accused was found Saturday outside “Sitting upright outside on the ground near the driveway of the residence” with a cut on his forehead, the police said. He was arrested and charged with first degree murder, attempted first degree murder and hate crime (2 counts).
The sheriff’s office further said that the woman ran to the bathroom to call 911 for help and emerged to find that the man had stabbed her son. “It all happened in seconds,” the woman texted, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
“Deputies located two victims inside the residence in a bedroom. Both victims had multiple stab wounds to their chest, torso, and upper extremities,” the sheriff’s statement said.
A serrated military-style knife with a seven-inch blade was pulled from the boy’s abdomen during the autopsy, the statement said.
The names of the deceased were not released by the authorities. Hhowever, the Chicago office of CAIR organised a news conference with the family members of the deceased where they identified the victims as Wadea Al-Fayoume and his mother Hanaan Shahin.
They said that the accused was their landlord and that they were staying on the ground floor of the home for two years.
“He knocked on the door and attempted to choke her, and said, ‘you Muslims’ must die,” Ahmed Rehab, head of CAIR’s Chicago office, told reporters, citing text messages sent by the woman to the murdered boy’s father from her hospital bed. — Agencies
