The 6-year-old Palestinian-American child was stabbed to death in his home in A chicago A suburban man over the weekend told his mum ‘I’m fine’ as he lay dying, a heartbreaking revelation has emerged Facebook Just hours after the attack.
Wadih Al-Fayoum, who loved to run and play football, uttered his last words after he and his 32-year-old mother, Hanan Shaheen, were stabbed dozens of times.
Joseph Chuba, 71, the owner of the family home, was arrested in connection with the stabbing incident. The Will County Sheriff’s Office said Chuba was likely motivated by “current events.” Middle Eastern The conflict involved agitation And the Israelis“, as well as the Islamic family doctrine.
The child died from his horrific injuries, and his mother remains in the hospital. Just hours after the attack on Saturday, she appeared to post her son’s final words on Facebook.
My son’s last words were: (I’m fine). May God have mercy on him and grant him the highest paradise.”
Ms Shaheen has also posted about her son in recent weeks, including a video on his sixth birthday on October 6, just 10 days before he was killed.
One video shows the mother and son playing while the boy blows kisses in front of the camera. Another video shows them playing outside on the playground and exercising together.
Funeral prayers and prayers were held for the boy at the mosque foundation on Monday, where people including his father prayed in front of a small coffin draped in the Palestinian flag.
Udi Fayoum, Wadih Fayoum’s father, gave a short speech in Arabic outside his son’s funeral, saying he hoped his son’s killing would “wake us up.”
“I am here as the boy’s father, not as a politician or religious scholar,” he said. “I am here as the father of a boy whose rights were violated.”
Fayoum said, according to what the newspaper quoted him as saying, “The issue of Hamas and Gaza is an issue of people, not an issue of countries.” News agency. “I am too young to comment on it, and I hope that my son will become the bullet that solves this case.”
Others spoke outside the boy’s funeral, calling for no war in the United States and calling on President Biden to apologize after he first said he had seen images of Israeli children being beheaded by Hamas.
Unverified allegations about the beheading of Israeli children and the rape of hostages by Hamas quickly spread on social media in the days following the attack in Israel.
The White House retracted the president’s claim last week, but several speakers at the boy’s funeral demanded a direct apology from Biden himself.
“Our president has to come out and say something,” said a man who identified himself as Uncle Wadia. “We are not at war”
“Do you want war? It’s outside. It’s not our war. It’s not the United States’ war,” he added.
The Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations calls the incident “our worst nightmare” and says they have seen a spike in hate calls and emails since violence erupted in the Middle East on October 7.
The organization claims that the mother sent text messages to the boy’s father, claiming that the suspect shouted “You Muslims, you must die” before the stabbing.
“What we have is a Palestinian child murdered by an extremist because of the environment we live in now, which portrays Palestinians as human animals,” Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR-Chicago, told reporters on Sunday.
Mr Rehab spoke again at the funeral on Monday.
“This was an attack on all of us. We were all stabbed that day,” he said. He then asked everyone, regardless of their religion, “to adhere to a basic level of respect for all of humanity.”
President Biden called the stabbing of the mother and son a “horrific act of hate” that “has no place in America, and goes against our core values: freedom from fear about how we pray, what we believe, and who we are.”
Chuba was found outside the home after the stabbing, “sitting upright outside on the ground near the residence’s driveway” with a cut on his forehead, authorities said.
He is charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crimes, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The US Department of Justice also launched a federal hate crimes investigation into the stabbing.
