Muslim boy in US killed, mother injured in Islamophobic attack

Washington, United States – AFP

A US landlord was charged with murder and hate crimes Sunday after allegedly stabbing a Muslim woman and her six-year-old son dozens of times in an attack that police linked to last week’s Hamas attack on Israel.

The child, who was stabbed 26 times, died at hospital, but the 32-year-old woman, believed to be his mother, is expected to survive the heinous attack, according to a statement from the Will County sheriff’s office in Illinois.

“Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Palestinians and the Israelis,” said the statement, which located the killing about 40 miles west of Chicago.

The sheriff’s office did not give further details or the victims’ nationality, but the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) described the child as a Palestinian-American.

Authorities said the woman managed to call 911 as she fought off the landlord, named by the sheriff’s office as 71-year-old Joseph Czuba.

“Deputies located two victims inside the residence in a bedroom. Both victims had multiple stab wounds to their chest, torso, and upper extremities,” the sheriff’s statement said.

A serrated military-style knife with a seven-inch blade was pulled from the boy’s abdomen during the autopsy, the statement said.

When police arrived they found Czuba sitting on the ground near the driveway of the residence with a laceration on his forehead. He was taken to hospital for treatment before being charged with murder, attempted murder, and two counts of hate crimes.

“He knocked on the door and attempted to choke her, and said, ‘you Muslims’ must die’,” Ahmed Rehab, head of CAIR’s Chicago office, told reporters, citing text messages sent by the woman to the murdered boy’s father from her hospital bed.

Israel declared war on impoverished Gaza last Sunday, a day after waves of the Palestinian resistance group’s fighters broke through the heavily fortified border in retaliation to Israel’s repeated storming of the sacred Al Aqsa mosque and increasing violent settler attacks in recent months.

The subsequent relentless bombing has flattened neighborhoods and left at least 2,670 people dead in the Gaza Strip, the majority ordinary Palestinians including at least 1000 children.