A 71-year-old Illinois man was recently charged with a hate crime after allegedly fatally stabbing a six-year-old kid and critically injuring a 32-year-old woman. Police said that he targeted the victims specifically due to their Muslim beliefs and in retaliation for the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Police in US localities and federal authorities have been on high alert recently for acts of violence motivated by antisemitism or Islamophobia. Jewish and Muslim organizations have noted a rise in the use of threatening and insulting language on social media. In the Chicago instance, authorities discovered the lady and kid late Saturday morning at a residence in Plainfield Township, southwest of the city, according to a statement posted on social media by the Will County Sheriff’s Office.
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At a hospital, the kid was confirmed dead. The statement stated that the victim suffered many stab wounds but was expected to live. The infant had been repeatedly stabbed; an autopsy revealed.
The sheriff noted 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 ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis.”
The Will County sheriff’s office states that the lady called 911 to say that her landlord had knifed her and that she had fled into a toilet to continue fighting him off.
The guy accused of carrying out the attack was discovered outside the house on Saturday, “sitting upright outside on the ground near the residence,” with a cut on his forehead, according to the authorities.
According to the sheriff’s office, Plainfield resident Joseph M. Czuba was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two charges of hate crimes, and aggravated violence with a dangerous weapon. He was being held on Sunday while awaiting his court date.
Attempts to get in touch with Czuba or a relative were futile. His home phone was not on any lists. Online databases and social media did not immediately respond to messages left for potential relatives. Regarding Czuba’s legal representation, neither the sheriff’s office nor the county public defender’s office quickly responded to queries.
The two victims’ names were withheld by the authorities.
However, Yousef Hannon, a man claiming to be the boy’s paternal uncle, addressed during a recent press conference held by the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian-American youngster, was recognized as the boy there. The mother of the kid was the other casualty, according to the organization.
“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,” Hannon, a Palestinian-American who moved to the US in 1999 to find employment (including as a teacher in a public school), remarked.
The incident, which the Muslim civil rights organization referred to as “our worst nightmare,” is a result of a troubling uptick in hate mail and phone calls that has occurred since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict. The organization claimed texts between family members that revealed the attacker had spoken negatively about Muslims.
“Palestinians basically, again, with their hearts broken over what’s happening to their people,” Executive Director of the organization Ahmed Rehab stated, “have to also worry about the immediate safety of life and limb living here in this most free of democracies in the world.”
