Plainfield man charged with hate crime in stabbing 6-year-old Palestinian boy to death, wounding mother over Mideast conflict, police say

About a decade ago, a young couple from the city of Beitunia in Palestine’s West Bank fled conflict in the Middle East and moved to the United States, where their new start seemed especially promising six years ago when they welcomed a baby boy.

The boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, grew to love “everything” and “everybody,” his father recalled Sunday.

But the violence they escaped found them again over the weekend in unincorporated Will County near Plainfield. The mother and son’s landlord, upset about the ongoing conflict involving Hamas and Israel, targeted the two and brutally stabbed the 6-year-old boy to death and seriously wounded his mother, 32, because they were Muslim, police said Sunday.

Joseph Czuba, 71, of Plainfield, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crimes and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in a “senseless and cowardly act,” the Will County sheriff’s office said in a news release Sunday.