Joliet, Illinois-a American Palestinian woman whose 6-year-old son was fatally stabbed in an attack that prosecutors say he was motivated by hatred for the Muslims described on Tuesday how her son watched with fear while her owner stabbed her more than a dozen times before turning the child to the child.
Hanan Shaheen was the first witness to take the position in the Joseph Czuba trial, 73, who is accused of the fatal stabbing of Wadoee Alfayoumi and Shaheen’s wound on October 14, 2023. The authorities said they were attacked due due to his Islamic faith and in response to war between Israel and Hamas that exploded on October 7, 2023, when Hamas South Israel attacked.
Shaheen testified that she and her son had been renting two rooms from Czuba and his wife, in the residence in Plainfield Township, a suburb to about 40 miles southwest of the center of Chicago, where the murder took place. Shaheen said they had lived for about two years and that they had previously had no problem with the Czubas, who shared a kitchen and a living room with the mother and the son.
Shaheen testified that he had told the Czubas that he was Muslim and Jerusalem when he met them before renting the space.
After the war began, he said that Czuba told him that he needed to leave because he wanted to rent the room to a friend. She said she told her that she was looking for a new place to live and that Czuba told her that Muslims were not welcome at home.
“I told him to pray for peace and went to my room,” he testified.
The day of the attack, he said, Czuba was angry because he was still there.
Shaheen, 33, said in graphic detail how Czuba sustained it and stabbed her more than a dozen times. At one point, he said, Czuba put his fingers in his mouth and tried to break his teeth. While fighting to fight him, Shaheen said, he pulled Czuba’s white hair, while he shouted: “You must die!”
Shaheen said that Wadee stopped at the corner of a room and watched with fear while Czuba stabbed her. She testified that Czuba shouted: “Wadee, I will take care of you. I will raise you “and” Don’t tell the people that I killed your mother “while stabbing her.
She said she remembered having thought: “It’s the time, it’s the day I die.”
She said she could finally free her, and although she couldn’t see clearly, she ran to a bathroom to recover her phone to call 911. He said Czuba followed her with her knife and tried to access the bathroom, so she closed. she herself inside.
Shaheen repeatedly told the dispatcher: “He is killing my baby,” according to a recording of the call that was reproduced in court.
Shaheen testified that while he was talking on the phone with a dispatcher, he could listen to Wadee shouting: “Oh, no, stop!”
Shaheen kept his head down as long as the recording was reproduced at the Williet County Palace in Joliet. She testified that she did not leave the bathroom until the police were out of the bathroom door.
Shaheen was stabbed more than a dozen times and Wadee was stabbed 26 times. He was declared dead in a hospital. Graphic images of Shaheen’s wounds were shown to jurors on Tuesday. Some of the evidence of the cameras used by the police body were so graphic that a judge ruled that it would be limited to the jurors. At least one jury seemed to be retaining tears while watching images of Wadea’s wounds.
Prosecutors have said that Czuba had been listening to the conservative radio coverage of the Middle East War in the days before attacks against the mother and the son.
“This happened because this defendant feared that a war that had begun on October 7, 2023, half a world in the Middle East, was going to reach his door,” Michael Fitzgerald, a state lawyer of Will County, told the jury in his opening statement.
“This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslims.”
“If it were not enough for this defendant to kill that child, he left the knife in the child’s body,” Fitzgerald told the jurors. He said they would listen to a conversation between CZUBA and a sergeant from the Sheriff’s Office of Will County, in which Czuba compared Wadee and Shaheen with “infested rats.”
Czuba, who was dressed in a lawsuit and tie in the court, is accused of murder, attempted murder, aggravated aggression and two charges of a crime of hate. Wadee’s father, Odai Alfayoumi, who did not live in the house, He attended judicial procedures on Tuesday.
Kylie Blatti, lawyer from Czuba, said in his opening statement that “there are holes in the case of the State.” He asked jurors to carefully examine the evidence.
Shaheen testified mainly in English, but under the interrogation by one of Czuba’s lawyers, George Lenard, sometimes he turned to an Arab translator for clarification. While the jury and Shaheen were out of the courtroom, Lenard accused her of “beautifying” her testimony and suggested that he had accused herself.
Prosecutors in turn said that Lenard was trying to use the language barrier to confuse Shaheen and ask him about words statements for words.
He asked about what he told the police after the stabbing, as well as if he had filed a civil demand for monetary damage, all in an apparent attempt to discredit it. Lenard asked if he had hired the civil rights lawyer Ben Crump and if he had met with former President Joe Biden after his son’s murder, which caused objections from the Prosecutor’s Office that Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak suffered.
In an interview on Tuesday, Johnny Simon, a lawyer from Shaheen, who filed an unfair death law . Actions that took that day.
“We are not looking for an apology. We are looking for justice. “
A panel of 12 jurors and three substitutes was selected on Monday. The jury of nine men and three women from Will County, a suburb of Chicago, includes a teacher, a mechanical engineer, a financial auditor, a commercial pilot and a retired construction manager. Almost everyone said they had heard or read about the case. The judge has ordered them not to read or see news about the case.
The trial is expected to last approximately one week.
Selina Guevara reported from Joliet, Illinois, and Janelle Griffith in New York.
