Middle East Tensions Claim Life of a Plainfield Child

Wadea Al-Fayoume had recently celebrated his sixth birthday. 

In the above photo he is shown wearing a blue birthday hat for his special day. 

He loved his toys as well as playing basketball and soccer and being with other students at his elementary school.

Wadea-s mom, Hanan Shaheen, age 32, was Palestinian American.  She had been in the U.S. for 12 years, and Wadea was born in the U.S.

Wadea’s mom had been renting two rooms for herself and Wadea on the first floor of a house near Plainfield, Illinois, southwest of Chicago. 

Their landlord, Joseph M. Czuba, age 71, lived with his wife on the second floor.

A neighbor described the landlord as an extremely religious person who seemed to really care about Wadea – even building him a treehouse in the backyard.

On the day after Wadea’s birthday, a Palestinian Middle East militant group, Hamas, located in the southern Gaza Strip area west of Israel, without warning, attacked Israel, which then retaliated.  Within a couple of days, more than 1,400 Israelis and 2,700 Palestinians were killed.

The landlord, a U.S. Air Force veteran, who had been listening to conservative-leaning radio talk shows about this new outbreak of violence, suddenly shifted his attitude towards all people of Palestinian backgrounds, and that included Hanan Shaheen and her son, Wadea.

When the landlord suddenly confronted Hanan about her Palestinian background, she told him, ‘Let’s pray for peace.’  The landlord then flashed a knife and began stabbing her.

After immediately calling 911, Wadea’s mom tried to escape to the bathroom while being stabbed multiple times by the angry landlord, who yelled, ‘You Muslims must die!’

While in the bathroom, the mom knew that Wadea also was being attacked in his bedroom.

When she then was able to enter Wadea’s bedroom, she found him bleeding profusely.  Authorities later said the boy had been stabbed 26 times.  During an autopsy, a forensic pathologist removed a serrated military-style knife with a 7-inch blade from Wadea’s abdomen. 

Wadea’s parents came to the United States about a decade earlier to flee the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Little did they realize that their son would be viciously killed in a quiet neighborhood in the U.S. Midwest.

The Plainfield attack followed a massive escalation in the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine, more specifically Hamas, which has been declared a Sunni Islamist political and military organization governing a portion of the Gaza Strip of land west of Israel that’s home to 2.3 million people – one of the world’s densest areas.

Of course, Wadea never knew much about that.

What he did know was that he loved his parents, the other kids at his school, and the treehouse his landlord had built for him.

Wadea’s uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, remembers the boy as having been very active, playful, and kind. 

The uncle said Wadea’s mom recalled the last words he spoke to her as he lay on his bed bleeding. 

He told her, ‘Mom, I’m fine.’

Added the uncle, ‘You know what, he is fine.  He’s in a better place.’

For Wadea, perhaps a new and more hopeful beginning that only he, a six-year-old, might understand.

Mr. Czuba, the landlord, was being held on charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, and a hate crime. 

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a hate crime investigation into the events leading up to the stabbings of Wadea and his mom.

David Goldenberg, a Midwest regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said on October 20 that reports of antisemitic actions have increased 400% across the U.S. since the October 7 Hamas attack with the highest figures in the Midwest.

Mr. Goldenberg stressed that words, especially those that are hateful, are likely to have consequences.

People of various communities, ages, and religious backgrounds gathered in a quiet spot in west-suburban Oak Brook, Illinois, on Sunday evening, October 22, 2023, in memory of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who lived near Plainfield, about ten miles south of Oak Brook. The video below was produced by NBC 5 News Chicago.