By Brad Brooks and Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) -An Illinois jury on Friday found a man guilty of murder and hate crime charges for an October 2023 stabbing that killed a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy and severely wounded his mother, according to court documents.
Joseph Czuba, 73, faces life in prison when he is sentenced in May for a murder that prosecutors said was sparked by anti-Muslim hatred. It took place just days after Hamas militants carried out an October 7, 2023 attack inside Israel.
The murder of the boy, Wadee Alfayoumi, and the attack on his mother, Hanan Shaheen, was one of the earliest and worst hate crime incidents in the U.S. since the start of the Israel-Gaza war.
Rights advocates have noted rising Islamophobia and antisemitism in the U.S. since the October 2023 Hamas attack and U.S. ally Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza.
Czuba, who was the landlord for Shaheen and her son, stabbed the boy 26 times with a military-style knife with a 7-inch (18-cm) serrated blade, authorities said. Shaheen suffered multiple stab wounds in the attack that occurred in Plainfield Township, about 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Chicago.
During the trial this week, Shaheen testified that Czuba told her “you, as a Muslim, must die”.
Michael Fitzgerald, prosecutor at Will County State’s Attorney’s Office, presented a 911 call’s recording in the trial.
“The landlord is killing me and my baby,” Shaheen is heard saying on the audio.
Czuba had earlier pleaded not guilty and did not testify during the trial that started on Tuesday.
Other U.S. incidents raising alarm over anti-Arab bias include the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian American girl in Texas, the stabbing of a Palestinian American man in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York, a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters in California and a Florida shooting of two Israeli visitors whom a suspect mistook to be Palestinians.
Incidents raising alarm over antisemitism include threats of violence against Jews at Cornell University that led to a conviction and sentencing, an unsuccessful plot to attack a New York Jewish center, and physical assaults against a Jewish man in Michigan, a rabbi in Maryland and two Jewish students in Chicago.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by David Gregorio and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
