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Will County Public Defender Kylie Blatti urged jurors to consider each piece of evidence carefully because key parts were missing.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo beyond the emotions to carefully examine the evidence,\u201d Blatti said during opening statements. \u201cIt is easy to get lost in the horror of those images.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family had been renting two rooms from Czuba and his wife, who also lived at the home where the murder happened in suburban Plainfield, nearly 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Chicago.<\/p>\n
Shaheen was the first witness and recounted the events leading up to the attack. She said they had not previously had any issues in the two years they had rented from the Czubas. They shared a kitchen and living room with the Czubas in the home.<\/p>\n
After the start of the war Czuba told her that they had to move out because Muslims were not welcome. She urged him to \u201cPray for peace.\u201d Later, he confronted Shaheen and attacked her, holding her down, stabbing her and trying to break her teeth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me \u2019You, as a Muslim, must die,\u201d said Shaheen, who mainly testified in English but had an Arabic translator on standby in her primary language. She occasionally turned to the translator for clarification on questions or to translate for her.<\/p>\n
After the attack, Shaheen said was scared and locked herself in the bathroom, noting blood all over her body and the room. She called 911 when she heard her son screaming in another room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe landlord is killing me and my baby!\u201d she screamed to the dispatcher multiple times, according to a recording of the call played in court. \u201cHe\u2019s killing my baby in other room!\u201d<\/p>\n
Yelling could be heard on the background. As the roughly 15-minute recording played in court, Shaheen put her head down, clutching a tissue paper in her hand.<\/p>\n
The boy \u2014 whose name was initially spelled Wadea Al-Fayoume by authorities \u2014 was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Shaheen had more than a dozen stab wounds<\/a> and it took her weeks to recover.<\/a><\/p>\n The attack on the family in Plainfield renewed fears of anti-Muslim discrimination in the Chicago area\u2019s large and established Palestinian community. The proceedings also come amid rising hostility<\/a> against Muslims and Palestinians in the US since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.<\/p>\n Hundreds attended the boy\u2019s janazah, or funeral service, where the boy was remembered as kind and into sports and Legos.<\/p>\n Separately, the father of the boy, who is divorced from Shaheen and did not live at the home, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit. He attended the court proceedings Tuesday along with an uncle.<\/p>\n Shaheen has also retained prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who said she would not talk to reporters during the trial, which is expected to last about a week.<\/p>\n \u201cHanan Shaheen continues the unimaginable fight for justice for Wadee,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cWe have confidence in the prosecution\u2019s efforts to earn justice for Wadee and Hanan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n