WILL COUNTY (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - A jury Friday afternoon convicted a Plainfield landlord of attacking his tenants in a 2023 racist attack, which killed a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy and critically injured his mother.
Prosecutors alleged Joseph Czuba, 73, attacked Hanan Shaeen and her son Wadee Al Fayoumi in October of 2023, saying he was radicalized by conservative commentary around the war in Gaza and believed Shaheen was going to call Palestinian friends to come and harm him.
Czuba was found guilty of all eight counts, which included murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery and hate crime.
Prosecutors began their closing argument Friday by replaying the video from the back of a police squad car, where Czuba states, “They are just like infested rats.”
“He thinks they’re rats,” Will County Assistant State Attorney Christopher Koch told the jurors. “What do you do when you have an infested rat situation? You exterminate, and that’s what he did on that day.”
Shaheen testified that on the morning of Oct. 14, 2023, Czuba stabbed her throughout her body while yelling; “You Muslim must die.”
Shaheen said she was able to lock herself in a bathroom and call 911 but while inside she began to hear her son screaming.
In a 911 call re-played for jurors Friday, Shaheen yells out; “He is killing my baby.”
Officers testified they found Wadee naked, lying on a bed. He had been stabbed 26 times.
After the attack, Czuba tells a sheriff’s police sergeant that he feared for his life and thought “they were going to do jihad on me.”
In a trial that began Monday, Czuba had pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and decided to not take the witness stand.
George Lenard, argued Friday that the case exemplifies a “rush to judgment,” and that police failed to conduct a proper investigation.
“How is it you can sign guilty verdicts when all this evidence was not tested?” Lenard asked during his closing argument Friday.
Lenard called on the jury not to jump to conclusions and instructed them to discuss the ways women generally respond when their child is in harm; “talk to the moms…There is something about women.”
Sentencing for Czuba will coming at a later date.
The Chicago Sun-Times Media Wire and WBBM's Carolina Garibay contributed to this report.
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