Jury convicts Illinois landlord in fatal stabbing of Palestinian American boy

Joliet: A jury in suburban Chicago convicted a man Friday on murder and hate crime charges in the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy who lived at his property.

The killing, which took place days after Hamas attacked Israel in 2023, was fueled by anti-Muslim hate, authorities said.

The defendant, Joseph Czuba, 73, faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced by a state judge in May.

The attack on Wadee Alfayoumi, a kindergartner who loved Legos and soccer, drew international attention and left many members of Illinois' large Palestinian and Muslim communities frightened and angry. Some leaders in those communities connected the attack to rhetoric used by some American politicians and media personalities that they said dehumanized Palestinians.

Wadee and his mother, Hanan Shaheen, who was wounded in the attack, had lived for two years in rented rooms in Czuba's home in Plainfield Township, Illinois, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago.

After the violence in the Middle East began, Shaheen told the jury, the relationship with her landlord suddenly soured. She said Czuba began making hateful statements about Muslims and demanded that Shaheen and her young son move out.

"I told him, 'Pray for peace,'" said Shaheen, who is Muslim and Palestinian American.

But a few days later, she said, Czuba knocked on her bedroom door and began stabbing her with a knife, leaving her bleeding from the chest, back and head. After she retreated into a bathroom to call 911, she said Czuba attacked Wadee, who had just celebrated his birthday. Shaheen remembered her son crying out, "Stop! Oh no!"

"I was sitting on the floor talking to the police, and I felt like in any second I would die," Shaheen said during Czuba's trial this week.

In court documents, prosecutors described Czuba as angry, erratic, paranoid and violent. They said he had been listening to radio coverage of the conflict in the Middle East and had become increasingly concerned that he was in personal danger because of his tenants.

"This happened because this defendant was afraid that a war that started on October 7, 2023 -- a half a world away in the Middle East -- was going to come to his doorstep," Michael Fitzgerald, a prosecutor, told jurors.

Mary Connor, who ended her marriage to Czuba months after the stabbings in 2023, told jurors that Shaheen and her son were model tenants and that her husband never had an issue with them until the days following the Hamas attack. At that point, she said, Czuba became more withdrawn and convinced that Shaheen had posed a danger.

"He said, 'Hanan needs to move because her friends could come and do us harm,'" Connor testified. "I said immediately: 'Joe, Hanan has never had anyone in our home. She's never had a guest.'"

During closing arguments, George Lenard, a lawyer for Czuba, voiced skepticism about the quality of the investigation and the strength of the evidence.

"There is no doubt there has been a rush to judgment in this case," Lenard told the jury. "From the time the 911 call came in, this case has been solved."

Czuba showed no reaction when the verdicts were read after about an hour of deliberations. Lenard said after court that he would seek a new trial.

Speaking in a courthouse conference room, Wadee's father, Odai Alfayoumi, described a mix of emotions after the convictions.

"I don't know if I should be pleased or upset, if I should be crying or laughing," he said, adding that "I pray that this senseless loss is the last."

Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said after the trial ended that "this was a case that shook up the Muslim community" and was "one of the worst hate crimes in recent memory."

"The fact that he was found guilty of all the charges is no surprise to us -- this was a very clear-cut case," Rehab said.

The Chicago region has a large Palestinian American community, including a suburban area with many Arab restaurants and shops that some refer to as Little Palestine.

Investigators said that Wadee, whose name has sometimes been transliterated as Wadea Al-Fayoume, was stabbed 26 times and pronounced dead at a hospital. Shaheen, who was 32 at the time, was stabbed more than a dozen times and hospitalized in serious condition.

In court, Shaheen answered questions from prosecutors about photos of her bloodied face that were taken in the hospital, and she described fighting back against Czuba, at one point wresting the knife from him and stabbing him before he seized the weapon from her.