An Illinois landlord was sentenced 53 years in prison Friday for the murder of 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi and the attempted murder of the boy’s mother in October 2023, an attack a jury found to be a hate crime spurred by the war in Gaza.
Given his age, Joseph Czuba, 73, will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars under the sentence imposed by Judge Amy M. Bertani-Tomczak.
A Will County jury in Illinois deliberated for just over an hour in February before finding him guilty of fatally stabbing Wadee, a Palestinian-American kindergartener. The panel also convicted Czuba of attacking his mother, Hanan Shaheen, and committing hate crimes.
Just before noon, Wadee’s grandfather, Mahmoud Yousef, walked slowly to the lectern to address the judge. He had not prepared a statement in advance, in part because “there’s nothing too much you can say.” He thanked the police, the attorneys and others who had been part of the case.
He then took a deep breath.
“It’s not easy,” he said.
He thanked Plainfield, for “standing up against the hate crimes.”
“No matter what the sentence is going to be, it’s not going to be justified for us,” he said.
Yousef turned around to face Czuba. Wadee’s parents had plans and dreams for him from the moment he was born, he said.
“Mr. Joseph had no right to take it,” he said. “We want to know what made him do this. What type of news did he hear on the TV or radio that made him do such an unheard (sic) crime, that is more than just hate? We are talking about a 6-year-old kid.”
He turned again to look at Czuba.
“We need to know,” he said. “We deserve for Mr. Joseph to explain his acts. One stab was not enough. Give the father that peace of mind, who had all the plans for his future.”
He turned back around.
“Mr. Joseph, say something,” he said.
Czuba said nothing.
Outside the fourth-floor courtroom after Bertani-Tomczak delivered the sentence, Yousef said he and Wadee’s father, Odai Alfayoumi, were disappointed that Czuba declined to speak.
“We were hoping he was going to say something,” he said. “This sentence is justice for the type of murder, but it’s not justice for us.”
The sentencing is a somber conclusion to a case that drew national attention to spiking Islamophobia against Palestinians and Muslims in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. The war broke out about a week before Czuba attacked the boy and his mother in the home they shared with him and his wife in Plainfield Township.
Czuba’s wife, who was not home at the time of the attacks, divorced him after his arrest and testified against him at trial.
Wadee spent the last morning of his life eating breakfast, helping his mother change the sheets on their beds and playing an educational cell phone game, according to his mother’s testimony. Then Czuba knocked on the door and pushed Shaheen when she opened it.
Shaheen testified during the trial that she believed she was dying during the attack, and locked herself in the bathroom to tell a 911 dispatcher “(Czuba is) killing my baby with a knife” as her son screamed in the next room.
The last words she heard him say were “oh no.”
Authorities found the 62-pound kindergartener lying on a bed with 26 stab wounds. Czuba had left the knife in his body.
Former President Joseph R. Biden named Wadee in a national address weeks after the war broke out, calling the boy “a proud American” and exhorting listeners not to “stand by and stand silent” when they witnessed Islamaphobic and anti-semitic behavior, which rose following the war’s outbreak.
Advocates hailed Czuba’s conviction as a welcome, expected punctuation to a case so wrenching it brought police to tears on the witness stand. But still, they warned, Wadee’s life and death proved the deadly consequences of “hate-filled rhetoric.” Though Wadee and his mother had lived with Czuba and his wife as tenants for nearly two years when the war began, Czuba only became hostile to them after becoming “heavily interested” in the war — telling Shaheen that her people were killing Jews and babies and likening his tenants to “infested rats” shortly after he was arrested.
Shaheen testified that she had no issues with Czuba until the Israel-Hamas war began. After the Oct. 7 attacks, he grew angry with her because she was Muslim and was from Jerusalem, she said.
She said Czuba told her “Muslims are not welcome here.”
He demanded she move out of the home, Shaheen told jurors. Czuba — who also withdrew $1,000 from the bank in case financial systems were affected by the war — said he needed to rent her rooms to a friend.
Shaheen said she assured him she was looking for a place. She also told him to “pray for peace.”
The home where Joseph Czuba allegedly stabbed 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi to death and seriously injured his mother, Hanan Shaheen, on Oct. 15, 2023, in Plainfield. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
On Oct. 14, 2023, Czuba knocked on Shaheen’s door and physically pushed her after she answered, she said.
“I told you to move out of my home,” Czuba told her, Shaheen testified, adding he was screaming about the war.
She said he also climbed on top of her and tried to strangle her. He stabbed her multiple times in the chest, mouth, neck, across her cheek and near her eye, according to authorities.
At one point, Shaheen testified Czuba told Wadee that Czuba and his wife would raise him but that he could never tell anyone that Czuba killed his mom.
Shaheen said she fought back during the attack but believed she was dying. She wasn’t seeing clearly and was swallowing blood, she said.
She was able to lock herself in the bathroom and call 911. That’s when he began attacking Wadee, she said.
“He’s killing my baby with a knife,” Shaheen told the dispatcher, according to a recording played in court.
Odai Alfayoumi and others carry the casket of his six-year-old son, Wadee Alfayoumi, to the burial at Parkholm Cemetery in La Grange Park on Oct. 16, 2023. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
After Czuba attacked Shaheen, he turned his anger towards Wadee, prosecutors said, stabbing him 26 times and leaving the knife with its 7-inch blade in his body.
Police testified they found Czuba lying on the ground in the yard. After his arrest, Czuba was captured on a police camera saying Wadee and Shaheen made him fear for his life.
“I begged her to get out for three days,” Czuba says on the recording. “She would not leave.”
Before the sentencing, Czuba’s defense attorney George Lenard asked for a new trial, objecting to what he described as “prejudicial” comments by prosecutors to the jury during rebuttal arguments that he alleged appealed to jurors’ sympathy. He referenced emotionally charged testimony and evidence, including a photograph of Wadee upon discovery by Will County Sheriff’s deputies.
“When that photograph of Wadee was shown to the jury, one of the jurors became visibly emotional and started crying,” he said.That juror, he said, was the foreman of the panel.
Bertani-Tomzack denied the motion.
“Even considering your claimed errors, the strength of the evidence that was presented in the courtroom makes the difference,” she said.
Wadee loved basketball, soccer and Legos, according to his family.
“I will always remember him with pride,” Wadee’s father’s said.
