Illinois man convicted of murder and hate crimes in stabbing of the 6 -year -old Palestinian child

Joliet, Ill.-A man from Illinois was declared guilty on Friday in the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old American Palestinian child and his mother’s wound, an attack that prosecutors said he was motivated by anti-musulm hate and a response to the Israel-Shamas War.

Joseph Czuba was convicted of first -degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated crimes of aggression and hate on October 14, 2023, killing Wadoee Alfayoumi, who was stabbed 26 times and in it Wounded by his mother, Hanan Shaheen, who was stabbed more than a dozen times in the suburbs of Chicago.

The jury deliberated for just over an hour.

The mother and the son rent two rooms from Czuba and his then wife in the municipality of Plainfield, about 40 miles southwest of the center of Chicago, where the attack took place.

Shaheen, 33, testified that Czuba, 73, became shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. He said that he and his then wife knew that he was Muslim and Palestinian ancestry before agreeing the rooms, and that he had no problem in the two years he rented of them. She was the first witness of the Prosecutor’s Office.

Shaheen and Czuba’s ex -wife, Mary Connor, who also testified for prosecution, said that in the week prior to stabbing, Czuba was outraged about the war between Israel and Hamas. Shaheen said He began to speak odiously about Muslims. Shaheen testified that Czuba told him that “your people” is killing the Jews and babies in Israel, that Muslims were not welcome at home and that he needed to move.

“I said: ‘Pray for peace,'” Shaheen testified.

Days later, said Shaheen, Czuba made his way in his room, opened her, stabbed her with a knife and tried to break her teeth, while her son, Wadee, watched with fear from a corner of the room. At one point, he said, he was able to get the knife and stab Czuba with him before he took it.

She said that when she went to the bathroom to call 911, Czuba moved to Wadee, who had just celebrated her birthday. She said she could hear him shout: “Oh, no, hold!” He was still staying in Wadee’s body when the first to respond arrived at the house. A knife with a 7 -inch blade, which prosecutors remained to show jury members several times during closing arguments, He was removed from his body. Shaheen was hospitalized and received 19 points of suture on his face, as well as basic foods on the back of his head.

The murder of Wadee and the attack against Shaheen caught international attention and left many people in the great Muslim and Palestinian communities of scared Illinois. Some in those communities criticized rhetoric of public officials and some in the media they said they had degraded Muslims and Palestinians.

Czuba did not testify in his trial.

In judicial documents, prosecutors said they became obsessed with war in the Middle East.

“This happened because this defendant feared that a war that had begun on October 7, 2023, half a world in the Middle East, was going to reach his door,” fiscal Michael Fitzgerald, a state lawyer of Will County, told the jury in his opening statement. “This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslims.”

Connor, 64, testified that it had become paranoid about their personal safety and believed that their lives could be in danger due to Shaheen. She said they both had a good relationship with Shaheen, whom she said she considered a friend and a good tenant. Czuba tried to make the house pleasant and sometimes brought home toys for Wadee, he said. Days after the war, he said, Czuba retired and told him that he wanted Shaheen out of his home.

“Hanan needs to move because his friends could come and hurt us,” Connor had told him that Czuba had told him.

But Connor, who was married to Czuba for 30 years, said he did not agree. She believed that they should adhere to the terms of Shaheen’s lease, and give her a 30 -day warning to move, and told Czuba that Shaheen had never had a guest at home.

“I was angry,” Connor testified. “In my mind, there was no reason to move.”

She said that Czuba also withdrew $ 1,000 of her bank account due to the fears that the US banking system would fail.

The prosecutors played a conversation between CZUBA and a sergeant of the Sheriff of Will County for the jury, in which Czuba compared Wadee and Shaheen with “infested rats.”

“What are you doing when you have an infested rat situation? You will exterminate them. And that is what did that day, ”said prosecutor Chris Koch on his final argument on Friday. “That was your thinking process.”

In his final argument, George Lenard, one of Czuba’s lawyers, invoked the OJ Simpson litigating lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, telling the jurors that there had been trouble to judge in the case of Czuba.

Lenard also questioned why Shaheen retired to the bathroom, evidence of the scene, the location of some of his wounds and seemed to suggest that he had a financial interest in the case, something. Tried to interrogate her under the interrogation. Shaheen filed a lawsuit for unfair death against Czuba and his ex -wife who is still pending.

“You know this is a half case that the Prosecutor’s Office is giving you,” he said.

He urged the jurors to “have the courage” to find Czuba not guilty.

Christine prosecutor Vukmir refuted his argument, qualifying the suggestion that Shaheen stabbed Wadee and then framed Czuba as “extravagant.”

“That is the plot he is presenting to you,” he told the jury. “It’s ridiculous.”

Czuba was found on the ground outside when the agents arrived at the house.

The jury listened to police officers, firefighters and other lifeguards, as well as a medical assistant who treated Shaheen in a hospital. They also listened to Shaheen’s 911 call to the police, in which Wadee’s screams could also be heard and she repeatedly told the dispatcher: “He is killing my baby.”

One of the Sheriff’s agents from Will’s County that found Wadee’s body cried at the stand while the jury watched images of his chamber worn by the body. Some of the images and images were so graphic that Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak granted a request from one of Czuba’s lawyers that the giant television monitor of the Court was rejected from the gallery so that only the jurors could see it.

Selina Guevara reported from Joliet, Illinois, and Janelle Griffith in New York.