Suspect in killing of Palestinian American boy makes 1st court appearance

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Joseph Czuba, the 71-year-old suspect in the killing of a Palestinian American boy, made his initial court appearance on Monday.

Czuba only made limited comments in court, accepting a public defender to handle his case.

He was the landlord for Hanaan Shahin, 32, and her 6-year-old son Wadea Al-Fayoume. Prosecutors said that he and Shahin got into an argument about the ongoing war in Israel and the Gaza Strip when Czuba turned violent, forcing Shahin to seek refuge in a bathroom, where she hid and called police, CNN reported.

Shahin, who is recovering after suffering over a dozen stab wounds during the attack, told authorities that she could hear her son being stabbed by Czuba.

The Will County’s Sheriff’s Office said a forensic analysis indicated that Al-Fayoume was stabbed 26 times during the attack.

Prosecutors said Shahin told them that Czuba had ordered the family to leave their Chicago-area apartment as soon as the conflict began, CNN reported.

Czuba was ordered held without bond, and a preliminary hearing has been set for Oct. 30, according to CNN.

Authorities have said Czuba was motivated by anti-Muslim animus and the conflict in Israel and Gaza.

He has been charged in state court with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and two counts of a hate crime.

The US Justice Department separately launched a federal hate crime investigation into the grisly attack.

The child's father, Oday Al-Fayoume, said before his son's funeral prayer on Monday that he was there as the father of the boy, not as a "political person, or a religious person, or anything."

"I’m here as the father of a child whose rights were taken from him,” he said in Arabic.

Calling his son a "gift" and a "martyr," he said he hopes that families in Gaza “accept him from me as such.”