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Join Telegram ChannelStay-at-home mom Malka Reich's life has been disrupted by the alleged hate crime and terrorist attack that took place partly in her own backyard last month.
The Chicago resident has spent the last year living with the horrors of rising anti-Semitism, but she says “the trauma of witnessing terrorism on my property was truly horrific,” Reich said. She believes officials are “trying to hide” key facts of the attack, which she described to Fox News Digital.
The mother of five said she was relaxing in her Rogers Park home, reading a cookbook while her baby took a nap on the morning of Oct. 26. Her husband had left the house 20 minutes earlier to take the couple's four older children to synagogue when Reich said she “heard the gunshots,” believed to be the shooting of a 39-year-old Orthodox Jew who was heading to the synagogue on the Sabbath morning. Abdallahi is accused of then shooting at police officers and paramedics before being shot and apprehended.
Reich remembers looking out the window and seeing someone running with a safety vest on.
“I thought maybe he would help me,” she said. But when police began to gather in the area where the man had fled, Reich realized she had seen the suspect.
Illegal immigrant faces hate crimes, terrorism charges following shooting of Jewish man in Chicago
The victim, described by the Jewish United Fund as a “member of the Jewish community,” was reportedly shot in the shoulder in Chicago. (Fox32 Chicago)
Reich left her house to find police, worried about whether the victim could have been her father or husband. The police “didn’t want to tell us anything,” Reich said.
Reich ran home, where her baby was still sleeping.
“That’s when I heard the second shooting,” she said. “I ran downstairs, looked out my window and saw my neighbor crouching behind a tree with a dog.”
In now-infamous footage captured by Reich's Ring camera, Reich calls his neighbor to ask if he wants to come inside. “When he saw me, he saw the alleged shooter. Honestly, he probably would have been killed if I hadn't said something,” Reich reported.
As her neighbor fled, Reich said she “saw the suspect come out of the shadows of my driveway. I was so close to him I could have smelled him without the glass between us. I I saw him leave. get up and shoot my neighbor. Reich said the suspect appeared to be carrying a “large” black handgun.
GROWING CALLS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO BE CHARGED WITH HATE CRIMES IN SHOOTING OF JEWISH MAN
Police are investigating a shooting that occurred Saturday, October 26, in the West Ridge neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. (Fox32 Chicago)
“At that moment,” Reich said, “I thought he was coming back for me,” noting the “loud, proud Israeli-American flag” hanging in front of his house.
Reich said the suspect returned to his driveway before turning around and leaving to do “this suicide push for the police.”
Meanwhile, Reich barricaded herself in her baby's room with a knife. She stayed there until a neighbor called to tell her the suspect had been arrested.
Malka Reich witnessed part of a hate crime against a Jewish man in her Chicago neighborhood.
The Chicago Police Department did not corroborate these details, pointing Fox News Digital to their Oct. 31 press conference in which they declined to give additional facts about the case until they read the entire offer to Abdallahi next week. Abdallahi is currently hospitalized after being injured during the shootout with police. The department found details that Abdallahi “planned the shooting and specifically targeted people of the Jewish faith.”
Reich praised the Chicago Police Department's quick response, calling responding police “super courageous” and “supportive of the Jewish community.” She also indicated that “the police officers I spoke to actually thought [the incident] was a hate crime,” although Chicago police waited until they had enough evidence to support the charge before announcing it.
Reich's experience also caused trauma that did not end with the event itself. Given his proximity to the events, Reich initially spoke about his experience to several media outlets. She found that their coverage sometimes obscured and confused the details it conveyed.
She says since the shooting, her life has been filled with struggles, headaches and insomnia.
“Besides terrorism coming across the border, this is a cover-up,” Reich said, saying she believed it came from both the government and the media. Initial reports of the incident were limited in terms of details, with officials refusing to confirm anything about the nature of the attack. At first, the police did not recognize that the victim was Jewish. Mayor Brandon Johnson took days to acknowledge the religious background of Abdallahi's Jewish victim, after an initial public statement that completely ignored it.
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Reich's own Ring doorbell camera appeared to capture the suspect shouting something that some reports said was an Arabic phrase, but although Chicago police acknowledged “that this individual had said something while he was exchanging gunfire with officers,” she has so far refused to do so. confirm what was said despite several questions from journalists.
“The statement that was made while he was engaging our officers is nothing that we can provide as evidence at this point that would support any motive against his actions toward our officers or toward our victim,” a police official said. police at a press conference. took place before hate crime and terrorism charges were filed.
Fox News Digital's conversations with various officials were even at times conflicting about whether certain information about the incident could be confirmed, although more details are expected to be made public when the full bid is filed. in the coming days.
When police finally announced the hate crime charge, Chicago Police Commissioner Larry Snelling revealed that evidence indicated the suspect “planned the shooting and specifically targeted people of the Jewish faith.”
Authorities also haven't provided much information about suspect Abdallahi. Fox News later confirmed that he was a Mauritanian national who entered the United States illegally before being apprehended in California in March 2023 and released in the United States.
The trauma associated with being Jewish in Chicago goes back much further than October 26 for Reich, who described how a growing contingent of Students for Justice in Palestine activists would “be aggressive at the Hillel table” when she attended the Illinois Institute of Technology. ten years ago.
The attacks of October 7 further increased this feeling of hatred. With all the anti-Israel activity in the city over the past year, Reich reports that she is “always worried if my husband goes downtown” and that she “no longer goes to the Northwest to walk by the lake.
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“We've really changed our lives around this to try to avoid it and protect our children from it,” Reich said.
Although Reich's children attended private schools, she once felt that public school was always a fallback option. Today, “we have reached a point where people cannot send their children to public schools if they are outwardly Jewish,” Reich lamented.
Ronn Blitzer, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Greg Norman, Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin and Griff Jenkins of Fox News contributed to this report.