CHICAGO - An Illinois landlord convicted of fatally stabbing a six-year-old Palestinian American boy died in custody, authorities said on July 26. He was 73.

The landlord, Joseph M. Czuba, died two months into his

53-year prison sentence,

according to the Will County Sheriff’s Office. He was convicted on murder and hate crime charges in the attack, which authorities said was motivated by anti-Muslim hate. It was not clear exactly when, where or how Czuba died.

The killing took place in October 2023,

days after Hamas attacked Israel.

According to authorities, Czuba stabbed six-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi and his mother Hanan Shaheen in their home, killing Wadee and severely wounding Ms Shaheen, who escaped to a bathroom and called 911. The judge who sentenced Czuba on May 2 called the attack “brutal and heinous”.

In Ms Shaheen’s testimony before the jury that convicted Czuba, she said she had rented a pair of bedrooms from him in Plainfield Township, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, for two years with no major issues. But after the Oct 7 attacks, Czuba – who lived in the same building – began making hateful remarks about Muslims and asked Ms Shaheen and her son to move out of the property, Ms Shaheen said.

As he listened to coverage of the war unfolding in the Middle East, prosecutors said, Czuba became increasingly erratic and paranoid. That fear drove him to force his way into his tenants’ rooms, they said, and attack Ms Shaheen, then 32, stabbing her more than a dozen times before she managed to escape.

Investigators said that Czuba then directed his rage towards Wadee, a kindergartner at the time who loved soccer and Legos. ms Shaheen told a 911 dispatcher that she could hear her son screaming from the bathroom, until the screams fell silent, according a 911 call played during the trial. Wadee was later pronounced dead at the hospital. He had been stabbed more than two dozen times.

The case received global attention and stoked fear and outrage among the large Palestinian and Muslim communities in Chicago’s suburbs. Some leaders in those communities linked the killing to what they described as dehumanizing rhetoric towards Palestinians in the wake of the Oct 7 attacks.

In February, more than a year after Wadee’s killing, Czuba sat impassively as a jury found him guilty on murder and hate crime charges. He again was silent at his sentencing hearing in May.

“This depraved killer has died, but the hate is still alive and well,” Mr Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of the Council On American Islamic Relations in Chicago, said in a statement on July 26. “It’s the hate that must die,” he added. NYTIMES

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