An Illinois woman called 911 Saturday morning to report that her landlord was attacking her and her son. Police arrived to a horrifying scene at the Plainfield Township home: the woman with more than a dozen stab wounds, a 6-year-old boy who'd been stabbed 26 times, and the suspect outside the home with a cut on his forehead. The victims were taken to a nearby hospital, where the little boy, who'd just celebrated his birthday the week prior, was pronounced dead, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. A 7-inch serrated blade from a military-style knife was removed from his abdomen, Patch reports. His mother remained in critical condition as of Sunday night, NBC Chicago reports. The victims are Palestinian-American, and police charged Joseph Czuba, 71, with two hate crime counts.
"Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis," the Will County Sheriff's Department says in a statement. In text messages to the boy's father, the woman recounted Czuba making anti-Muslim statements as he attacked her after knocking on their door, and saying he was upset with what he'd been seeing on the news. She said she escaped to a bathroom to call 911 and came out to find her son had been stabbed. "It all happened in seconds," one of the texts said. Czuba is also charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. The family says there had been no previous issues with their landlord, and that he'd even once built the little boy a treehouse.
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