A 71-year-old Illinois man accused of fatally stabbing a boy and seriously injuring a woman over his Islamic faith and Israel’s war with Hamas has been charged with a hate crime, officials said. authorities.
The two victims, a 32-year-old woman and a 6-year-old boy, were found with multiple stab wounds to the chest, torso and upper extremities at a residence in unincorporated Plainfield Township, L. outside Chicago, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said. said in a statement on social media.
The woman was taken to hospital in serious condition, with more than a dozen stab wounds to her body, and is expected to survive. The boy was pronounced dead at the hospital, the sheriff’s office said. An autopsy revealed the boy had been stabbed 26 times.
President Biden said Sunday he was “shocked and sickened” by the boy’s killing in Illinois, calling on Americans to reject Islamophobia. “This horrific act of hatred has no place in America and goes against our core values: to be unafraid about how we pray, what we believe, and who we are.”
Officers responding to the scene found the suspect, identified as Joseph M. Czuba, sitting outside the residence with a cut on his forehead. He was then taken to a local hospital for treatment.
Authorities have not identified the victims. The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the victims were a mother and her son. The organization said the boy was Palestinian-American.
The boy’s father appeared at a press conference organized by the organization on Sunday. The group said the father shared text messages with them from the mother describing the incident.
The mother and boy had been renting a floor in Czuba’s house for two years without incident, the organization said.
Saturday morning, Czuba knocked on their door. Once the mother opened it, “he tried to strangle her and started attacking her with a knife, shouting: ‘You Muslims must die!’ When she ran into the bathroom to call 911, she discovered he had stabbed her 6-year-old son to death,” the group said in a statement.
Czuba was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of a hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
“Detectives were able to determine that the two victims of this brutal attack were the suspect’s target due to their Muslim background and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East involving Hamas and the Israelis,” the sheriff’s office statement said.
The Will County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for additional information.
The suspect was taken to the Will County Adult Detention Center and is awaiting a court appearance, the release added.
A day before the attack, the FBI warned its law enforcement partners of an increase in terrorist threats in the United States as the war between Israel and Hamas rages.
“In this heightened environment, there is no doubt that we are seeing an increase in reported threats, and we must be on the lookout, particularly for lone actors who may be inspired by recent events to commit their own violence,” he said. Wray said. said Sunday at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in San Diego.
James Doubek and Kevin Drew contributed reporting.