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An Illinois man was sentenced on Friday to 53 years in prison for the murder of six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoumi in a brutal attack that authorities described as an anti-Muslim hate crime linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Joseph Czuba, 73, was convicted in February for fatally stabbing Wadea and assaulting the boy’s mother, Hanan Shaheen. The attack took place just a week after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, with Czuba, who was the family’s landlord, targeting the Muslim family.
Wadea was stabbed 26 times with a serrated military knife, and a 15-centimetre blade was removed from the child’s abdomen during the autopsy. Czuba’s ex-wife, Mary, and Shaheen testified that Czuba was angered by the situation in Gaza and that this drove him to attack the family.
Following a brief deliberation of just over an hour, the jury convicted Czuba of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and two hate crime charges.
Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak sentenced Czuba to 30 years in prison for Wadea’s murder, 20 years for the assault on his mother, and three years for the hate crimes. The sentences will run consecutively.
During the sentencing, Wadea’s great-uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, asked Czuba why he had carried out the attack but received no reply. “We want to know what made him do this,” Yousef said in court.
According to the Will County Sheriff’s Office, the victims were targeted because they were Muslim and in relation to the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and Israel.
US President Joe Biden, at the time, condemned the attack as a “horrific act of hate” that “has no place in America.”
