Illinois Man Sentenced to 53 Years in Prison in Killing of Palestinian American Boy

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A jury in suburban Chicago convicted the man of murder and hate crime charges in the 2023 killing of Wadee Alfayoumi, 6. He was the boy’s landlord.

By Robert Chiarito and Mitch Smith

Robert Chiarito reported from Joliet, Ill.

An Illinois judge sentenced a man to 53 years in prison on Friday for the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old boy in 2023 and the nonfatal stabbing of the boy’s mother, an attack that jurors found to have been motivated by anti-Muslim hate.

The killing of Wadee Alfayoumi, a Palestinian American kindergartner who loved Legos and soccer, attracted international attention in October 2023, just days after Hamas attacked Israel. The attack on Wadee and his mother, Hanan Shaheen, were “brutal and heinous,” Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak said as she announced the sentence of the man, Joseph M. Czuba, on murder and hate crime changes.

The authorities quickly arrested and charged Mr. Czuba, 73, who rented out space in his home to Wadee and his mother in Plainfield Township, Ill. Prosecutors said Mr. Czuba, who had rented rooms to Wadee’s mother for two years with no significant problems, had grown paranoid and violent after listening to radio coverage of the unfolding conflict in the Middle East.

The attack left many members of Illinois’s large Palestinian American and Muslim communities frightened and angry. Some leaders connected the attack to rhetoric used by some American politicians and media personalities that they said dehumanized Palestinians.

Ms. Shaheen testified during Mr. Czuba’s trial in February that he had started speaking hatefully about Muslims and asked her to move out of the home.

“I told him, ‘Pray for peace,’” said Ms. Shaheen, who is Muslim and Palestinian American.

A few days after that first tense conversation, Ms. Shaheen told jurors, Mr. Czuba forced his way into her room 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 Mr. Czuba fatally attacked Wadee, who had just celebrated his sixth birthday.

The boy, she said, cried out, “Stop, oh no.”

During the trial, prosecutors told jurors that the killing had been motivated by fear and hate.

“This happened because this defendant was afraid that a war that started on Oct. 7, 2023 — a half a world away in the Middle East — was going to come to his doorstep,” Michael Fitzgerald, a prosecutor, told jurors. “This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslim.”

The jury deliberated for about an hour before convicting Mr. Czuba on murder and hate crime charges.

Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.

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