Saturday started out as a normal day, 32-year-old Hanaan Shahin told police, with breakfast in the home her family rented in Plainfield Township, Illinois.
Within hours, Shahin was in the hospital, recovering from more than a dozen stab wounds, after the family’s landlord brutally attacked her and her 6-year-old son, Wadea Al Fayoume, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said. Wadea was stabbed 26 times and did not survive.
Court documents filed Monday detail the days and moments before 71-year-old Joseph M. Czuba allegedly killed Wadea in what investigators called an anti-Muslim attack.
Shahin, who is Palestinian, told authorities she rents two rooms in Czuba’s house where she lived with Wadea on the first floor, and Czuba lived on the second floor, according to the documents.
The family “had no reason to suspect what was to occur,” Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Chicago, said Sunday.
In fact, Wadea’s father said Czuba brought the boy toys – that he even built him a tree house and allowed him to swim in a makeshift pool, Rehab said.
“It wasn’t until (Czuba) started watching the news and hearing the statements that something changed,” he added.
Czuba’s wife, Mary, told police he “listens to conservative talk radio on a regular basis,” and was heavily interested in the recent events happening in Israel, the documents show.
Czuba told his wife on Wednesday that he wanted Shahin and her family to move out of the home and said that Czuba “believed that they were in danger and that (Shahin) was going to call over her Palestinian friends or family to harm them,” the documents show.
Czuba’s wife said he secretly made a $1,000 cash withdrawal, “in case the U.S. grid went down,” the documents state. She said he expressed concern over a “National Day of Jihad that was supposed to occur on Friday, October 13th, 2023,” the day before the stabbing, investigators said in the documents.
Shahin told police she tried reaching out to Czuba’s wife via text in the days before the attack about his hatred of Muslims and that Czuba confronted her on Wednesday about the events unfolding in the Middle East, according to the documents.
‘Let’s pray for peace’
On Saturday, moments before the attack, Czuba told Shahin he was angry at her for what was going on in Jerusalem, the mother told investigators, according to the documents.
“Let’s pray for peace,” Shahin said in response, she told police. Then, she said, Czuba attacked her with a knife, the documents said.
Shahin told police she was able to get away by locking herself in a nearby bathroom, though she was not able to get Wadea into the bathroom with her, the documents said. As she called 911 from inside the bathroom, she told investigators, she could hear her son was being stabbed, prosecutors said during a court hearing Monday.
After attempting to kick in the front door, Plainfield Police Department officers were able to enter the house through the back door.
Responding officers first encountered Czuba “laying on his back in the yard at the rear of the residence,” according to the filing. A knife holster was found on his waist belt and removed. Several pocketknives were also located next to his feet, the filing said.
Czuba, who did not make any statements, was placed in handcuffs and detained, and a field dressing was placed on a wound on his head, according to the filing.
A responding officer found Shahin sitting in the front of the house. She “had multiple facial wounds and was bleeding profusely,” the filing said.
The Plainfield Fire Department provided medical treatment and transported Wadea and his mother to Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, while Czuba was sent to another hospital for further medical treatment.
Wadea was pronounced dead at Saint Joseph Medical Center shortly after noon, according to the documents.
Czuba was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of a hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, the sheriff’s office said. He appeared in court Monday, where his attorney, Kylie Blatti, told the court Czuba has no prior convictions. The judge ordered Czuba to be held without bond, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for October 30.
Wadea’s parents are from a village in the West Bank, Rehab said. Wadea’s mother moved to the United States 12 years ago, his father moved to the US nine years ago, and Wadea was born in the US.
The attack has been widely condemned by officials, including President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, who said in a statement that the “child’s Palestinian Muslim family came to America seeking what we all seek – a refuge to live, learn, and pray in peace.”
“As Americans, we must come together and reject Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry and hatred,” the statement read.
