8-year-old Palestinian boy stabbed to death in Chicago in 'hate crime'

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
16 Oct 2023 00:10
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CAIR-Chicago, the US' largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, calls the stabbing “our worst nightmare.”

A picture of the Palestinian-American Wadea al-Fayoume (Twitter/CAIR National)

A child was killed and a woman was badly injured after being stabbed over a dozen times in Plainfield Township, Chicago, just after 11:30 am.

According to the Will County Sheriff’s Office, authorities were called on reports that a woman was being attacked by her landlord with a knife. Authorities say the woman told police that she ran into the bathroom while fighting off her attacker and dialed 911.

After arriving at the scene, police found a man sitting near the driveway with a laceration to his forehead. Deputies then found the 32-year-old woman Hanaan Shahin and her son Wadea al-Fayoume with over a dozen stab wounds to the chest, torso, and upper extremities.

The boy was taken to the hospital in critical condition and later succumbed to his injuries. The suspect was also taken to the hospital and was being treated for injuries, after which he was taken in for questioning by detectives.

We are shocked and disturbed to learn that a landlord in Chicago expressing anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian views broke into a Muslim family's apartment and attacked them with a knife, injuring the mother and killing her 6-year-old son, Wadea Al-Fayoume. @cairchicago will hold a… pic.twitter.com/N0ILuevq4n
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 15, 2023

Authorities declared that the weapon used in the stabbings has been recovered and an investigation was underway, but they claim that the motive remains unclear and police say no criminal charges have been filed yet.

Meanwhile, civil society and human rights organizations called Saturday for protective measures to combat racism against Palestinians and discrimination against their online content, highlighting the interconnection between the digital world and the real world.

'You Muslims must die'

The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago), the US largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned the stabbing as “our worst nightmare.”

It is worth noting that the family says the child was six years old.

It revealed that the mother and her child lived on the ground floor of the house for two years and had no previous issues with the landlord who was identified as 71-year-old Joseph Czuba.

Shared with CAIR-Chicago, the text messages allegedly sent to the child's father of the boy by the mother from the hospital showed that the landlord who was angry with what he was seeing in the news knocked on their door, and when the mother opened, he attempted to choke her and attacked her with a knife, yelling, “You Muslims must die!”

After running into the bathroom to call 911, she came out and found her son stabbed to death.

“It all happened in seconds,” she texted.

Ahmed Rehab, CAIR-Chicago Executive Director, said, “Our hearts are heavy, and our prayers are with the darling boy and his mother."

He added, “As we await the official investigation of the local authorities, what we can confirm at the moment is that we have a murdered child in his own home, a six-year who had just celebrated his birthday a couple of weeks ago, and a mother lying in the hospital in serious condition, both stabbed over a dozen times. And we have testimony from the mother as to the harrowing moments that unfolded in terms of what was done and said – and it is our worst nightmare.”

“We have full confidence in the authorities to investigate this heinous incident as a hate crime and to do so swiftly.”