JOLIET, Ill. — An Illinois man was found guilty Friday in the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy and the wounding of his mother, an attack that prosecutors said was motivated by anti-Muslim hate, just days after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.
Joseph Czuba was convicted of first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery and hate crimes in the Oct. 14, 2023, killing of Wadee Alfayoumi, who was stabbed 26 times, and in the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen, who was stabbed more than a dozen times in suburban Chicago.
The jury deliberated for just over an hour.
The mother and son rented two rooms from Czuba and his then-wife in Plainfield Township, about 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago, where the attack took place.
Shaheen, 33, testified that Czuba, 73, turned on her shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. She said he and his then-wife were aware that she is Muslim and of Palestinian descent before they agreed to rent the rooms to her, and that she didn’t have any issues in the two years she rented from them. She was the prosecution’s first witness.
Shaheen and Czuba’s ex-wife, Mary Connor, who also testified for the prosecution, said that in the week leading up to the stabbings, Czuba was outraged about the war between Israel and Hamas. Shaheen said he began speaking hatefully about Muslims. Shaheen testified that Czuba told her “your people” are killing Jewish people and babies in Israel, that Muslims were not welcome in his home and that she needed to move out.
“I told him, ‘Pray for peace,’” Shaheen testified.
Days later, Shaheen said, Czuba forced his way into her room, held her down, stabbed her with a knife and tried to break her teeth, as her son, Wadee, watched in fear. At one point, she said, she was able to get ahold of the knife and stab Czuba before he seized it from her.
She said that when she went into a bathroom to call 911, Czuba moved on to Wadee, who had just celebrated his birthday. She said she could hear him shouting, “Oh no, stop!”
A knife with a 7-inch blade, which prosecutors held up to show jurors multiple times during closing arguments, was still lodged in Wadee’s body when first responders arrived and was later removed. Shaheen was hospitalized and received 19 stitches on her face, as well as staples on the back of her head.
The killing of Wadee and the attack on Shaheen drew international attention and left many people in Illinois’ large Muslim and Palestinian communities frightened. Heena Musabji, legal director at the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Friday it “is the most heinous of hate crimes to impact Chicago’s Muslim community in recent history.”
Czuba, who did not testify at his trial, will be sentenced May 2.
In court documents, prosecutors said he became obsessed with the war in the Middle East.
“This happened because this defendant was afraid that a war that had started on Oct. 7, 2023, a half a world away in the Middle East, was going to come to his doorstep,” Prosecutor Michael Fitzgerald, a Will County assistant state’s attorney, told jurors in his opening statement. “This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslim.”
Connor, the ex-wife, testified that Czuba had become paranoid about his personal safety and believed that their lives might be in danger because of Shaheen. She said that they both had a good relationship with Shaheen, whom she said she considered a friend and good tenant. Czuba tried to make the home enjoyable and would sometimes bring home toys for Wadee, she said. Days after the Hamas attack, Czuba became withdrawn and told her that he wanted Shaheen to move out of their home, she said.
“Hanan needs to move because her friends could come and do us harm,” Connor testified Czuba had told her.
But Connor, who was married to Czuba for 30 years, said she disagreed. She believed they should adhere to the terms of Shaheen’s lease, and give her 30 days notice to move, and told Czuba that Shaheen had never had a guest in the home.
“I was angry,” Connor testified. “In my mind, there was no reason for her to move.”
She said Czuba also talked of an upcoming “day of jihad” and withdrew $1,000 from his bank account because of fears the U.S. banking system would fail.
Prosecutors played for jurors a conversation between Czuba and a Will County sheriff’s sergeant, in which Czuba compared Wadee and Shaheen to “infested rats.”
“What do you do when you have an infested rat situation? You exterminate them. And that’s what he did that day,” prosecutor Chris Koch said in his closing argument Friday. “That was his thought process.”
In his closing argument, George Lenard, one of Czuba’s attorneys, invoked O.J. Simpson’s trial attorney Johnnie Cochran, telling jurors that there had been a rush to judgment in Czuba’s case.
Lenard also questioned why Shaheen retreated to the bathroom, the location of some of her wounds and the evidence from the scene, and he appeared to suggest that Shaheen had a financial interest in the case, something he tried to question her about under cross-examination. Shaheen filed a wrongful death suit against Czuba and his ex-wife that is still pending.
“You know this is a half-baked case that the prosecution is giving you,” he said.
He urged the jurors to “have the courage” to find Czuba not guilty.
Prosecutor Christine Vukmir rebutted his argument, calling the suggestion that Shaheen stabbed Wadee and then framed Czuba “outlandish.”
“That is the plot that he is presenting to you,” she told jurors. “It is ridiculous.”
Czuba was found on the ground outside when deputies arrived at the house.
Jurors heard from police officers, firefighters and other first responders, as well as from a physician assistant who treated Shaheen at a hospital. They also heard Shaheen’s 911 call to police, in which Wadee’s cries could be heard and she repeatedly told the dispatcher, “He is killing my baby.”
One of the Will County sheriff’s deputies who found Wadee’s body cried on the stand as jurors watched footage from her body-worn camera. Some of the footage and images were so graphic during the trial that Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak granted a defense request that the courtroom television monitor be turned away from the gallery, where members of Wadee’s family sat during the trial, so that only the jurors could see it.
Wadee’s father, Odai Alfayoumi, said at the Will County courthouse in Joliet that he felt “like this decision came a little too late.”
“I don’t know if I should be pleased or upset, if I should be crying or laughing,” he said in Arabic through a translator. “People are telling me to smile. Maybe if I were one of you, I would be smiling. But I’m the father of the child, and I’ve lost a child.”
“I pray that this loss, this senseless loss, is the last that we will see, that no child would suffer what my beloved little Wadee had to go through,” he continued.
Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of CAIR Chicago, who translated his remarks, said Shaheen was not present when the verdict was announced because it was too difficult, but she wanted him to relay that she prays only for peace and love.
Selina Guevara reported from Joliet, Ill., and Janelle Griffith from New York.
