A Plainfield landlord was sentenced to 53 years in prison Friday for attacking his Palestinian American tenant and killing her son, 6-year-old Wadee Al Fayoumi — stabbing him 26 times — in one of the most violent hate crimes to immediately follow the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel.
But the sentence was not enough to console the boy’s grandfather, who asked the convicted Joseph Czuba in court to explain why he did it.
“We want to know what made him do this,” Mahmoud Yousef told the judge shortly before sentencing. “What type of news that he heard, either on TV or radio or whatever, that made him do such an unheard [of] crime.”
Prosecutors have said Czuba was radicalized by conservative news commentary about the war in Gaza.
Yousef then turned and, staring at Czuba, said, “For our peace of mind, Mr. Joseph, say something.”
But the answers did not come.
Czuba declined to speak before Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak, who handed down the sentence: 30 years for killing Wadee; 20 for trying to kill his mother, Hanan Shaheen; and two 3-year sentences, to be served simultaneously, for the counts of hate crime. The judge did not comment beyond calling it a brutal crime.
It was not the maximum sentence of life the judge could have imposed. But Czuba will not likely outlive his sentence. His attorney said the 73-year-old has stage-4 cancer.
After court, Wadee’s father told reporters he was still confused about how Czuba, who he said had once admired his boy and thought of him as an “angel,” could have changed so suddenly and called him a “devil Muslim,” as prosecutors alleged in court.
Yousef told reporters that no sentence could bring justice.
“It doesn’t matter what numbers are. He took life from us,” he said.
Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, in a statement, called the “cruelty” of Czuba’s actions “truly unfathomable.”
Czuba was convicted of all charges in late February after a four-day trial. Prosecutors said he carried out the murder after becoming increasingly paranoid about the war in Gaza after listening to commentary on conservative talk radio. A jury deliberated for a little over an hour before convicting him of all counts.
Czuba’s attorney on Friday tried to convince the judge to dismiss the verdict and request a new trial, arguing the prosecutors used emotional language during closing arguments. But the judge denied the motion.
The sentencing concludes a case that drew international attention to Islamophobia in America after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. Thousands attended Wadee’s funeral. Earlier this year, Wadee’s mother Shaheen discussed Islamophobia with then-President Joe Biden at the White House.
During the trial, Shaheen testified that Czuba started treating her differently after the Oct. 7 attacks. She testified he told her, “Your people are killing Jewish [people] and babies in Israel. Muslims are not welcome here, not in my home.”
On the morning of Oct. 14, 2023, Czuba banged on her door as Shaheen was in her bathroom preparing to give her son a shower, she testified. Czuba pushed into the unit and began stabbing her while yelling, “You Muslim must die,” she testified.
Shaheen locked herself in a bathroom and called 911, she testified. But while inside, she heard her son screaming. Police arrived and found 62-pound Wadee on a bed, bleeding. He had been stabbed 26 times. Officers found Czuba at the scene covered in blood with a holster for a knife attached to his side, according to police testimony.
Czuba was recorded in the back of a squad car telling an officer he was afraid for his life.
“I was afraid they were going to do jihad on me,” he said in video shown during the trial.
Czuba’s now ex-wife, who was not home at the time of the attack, testified she pushed back against Czuba’s claims that Shaheen would bring friends over to harm him. She testified that Czuba had no reservations about Shaheen’s Muslim faith or Palestinian background when he began renting to her in 2021 at Czuba’s Plainfield property on Lincoln Highway.
The sentence drew praise from the Chicago chapter of the Council On American Islamic Relations.
“No sentence can restore what was taken, but today’s outcome delivers a necessary measure of justice,” Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR-Chicago, said in a statement. “Wadee was an innocent child. He was targeted because of who he was — Muslim, Palestinian, and loved. Our work now is to ensure that no other child suffers from the deadly consequences of hate.
