Image Credit: Family Handout/CAIR-Chicago
The police in the United States have confirmed the killing of a six-year-old Muslim boy and his mother seriously injured by their 71-year-old Illinois landlord identified as Joseph M. Czuba, of Plainfield, allegedly as a response to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Czuba has been arrested and charged with a hate crime after police and relatives said he singled out the victims because of their faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas, AP reports.
According to the AP report, in recent days, police in U.S. cities and federal authorities have been on high alert for violence driven by anti-semitic or Islamophobic sentiments.
The FBI officials, along with Jewish and Muslim groups, have reported an increase of hateful and threatening rhetoric.
The Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement said that in the Chicago-area case, officers found the 32-year-old woman and boy late Saturday morning at a home in an unincorporated area of Plainfield Township, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.
Relatives and a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group identified the slain boy as the wounded woman’s son.
The statement said that the boy was pronounced dead at a hospital while the woman had multiple stab wounds and was expected to survive, and an autopsy on the child showed he had been stabbed dozens of times.
The AP quoted the sheriff’s statement as saying that “Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis.”
The Will County sheriff’s office said that the woman had called 911 to report that her landlord had attacked her with a knife, adding she then ran into a bathroom and continued to fight him off.
The man suspected in the attack was found Saturday outside the home and “sitting upright outside on the ground near the driveway of the residence” with a cut on his forehead, authorities said.
Czuba was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crimes and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to the sheriff’s office.
WLS-TV reported that Czuba was scheduled for an initial hearing on Monday afternoon at the county courthouse in Joliet, according to the Will County State’s Attorney Office.
Authorities did not release the names of the two victims but the boy’s paternal uncle, Yousef Hannon, who reportedly spoke at a news conference on Sunday hosted by the Chicago chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations where the boy’s father was in attendance, identified the deceased as Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American boy who recently had turned 6; while the organization identified the other victim as the boy’s mother.
Hannon, a Palestinian American who emigrated to the U.S. in 1999 to work, including as a public school teacher, was quoted as saying, “We are not animals, we are humans. We want people to see us as humans, to feel us as humans, to deal with us as humans, because this is what we are.”
The Muslim civil liberties organization called the crime “our worst nightmare” and part of a disturbing spike in hate calls and emails since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. The group cited text messages exchanged among family members that showed the attacker had made disparaging remarks about Muslims.
The group’s executive director, Ahmed Rehab, said that “Palestinians basically, again, with their hearts broken over what’s happening to their people have to also worry about the immediate safety of life and limb living here in this most free of democracies in the world.”
In response to the increased threats, the Illinois State Police are communicating with federal law-enforcement and reaching out to Muslim communities and religious leaders to offer support, according to a Sunday press release from Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.
Pritzker said that “To take a six-year-old child’s life in the name of bigotry is nothing short of evil,” adding that “Wadea should be heading to school in the morning. Instead, his parents will wake up without their son. This wasn’t just a murder — it was a hate crime. And every single Illinoisan — including our Muslim, Jewish, and Palestinian neighbors — deserves to live free from the threat of such evil.”
The Justice Department opened a hate crime investigation into the events leading up to the attack, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
FBI Director Chris Wray, said on a call with reporters Sunday that the FBI is also moving quickly to mitigate the threats.
A senior FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Bureau said the majority of the threats that the FBI has responded to were not judged to be credible, adding that the FBI takes them all seriously nonetheless.
The official also said that agents have been encouraged to be “aggressive” and proactive in communicating over the last week with faith-based leaders. The official said the purpose is not to make anyone feel targeted but rather to ask clerics and others to report to law enforcement anything that seems suspicious.