New Delhi: A six-year-old Palestinian-American boy was brutally stabbed to death in a horrific hate crime near Chicago, America on Saturday after being singled out for his faith and as a “response” to the the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Suspect Joseph Czuba, 71, who was the landlord, also seriously wounded the boy’s mother, but she is expected to survive.
Czuba has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, the police said.
The boy was stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife with a 7-inch serrated blade, the police added, while his 32-year-old mother had more than a dozen stab wounds on her body.
The Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement: “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.”
US President Joe Biden called the attack a “horrific act of hate has no place in America”. He said in a statement that the boy’s family were Palestinian Muslims who “came to America seeking what we all seek — a refuge to live, learn, and pray in peace”.
When police arrived at the scene Saturday in Plainfield Township, about 64 kilometres southwest of Chicago, they found Czuba sitting on the ground outside the home with a cut to his forehead. The victims were in a bedroom, Reuters reported.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) identified the boy as Wadea Al-Fayoume and the mother as Hanaan Shahin. “The Islamophobic rhetoric and anti-Palestinian racism being spread by politicians, media outlets, and social media platforms must stop,” CAIR said on the social media platform X.
We are shocked and disturbed to learn that a landlord in Chicago expressing anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian views broke into a Muslim family's apartment and attacked them with a knife, injuring the mother and killing her 6-year-old son, Wadea Al-Fayoume. @cairchicago will hold a… pic.twitter.com/N0ILuevq4n
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 15, 2023
The organisation said in a statement that the boy had celebrated his sixth birthday a couple of weeks ago. It also said that the family had lived on the ground floor of the house for two years.
The Chicago chapter of CAIR said the suspect reportedly yelled, “You Muslims must die!” before the stabbing, and called the crime “our worst nightmare”. The organisation said there had been a spike in hate calls and emails since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
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