Stay-at-home mom Malka Reich’s life was upended by the alleged hate crime and terror attack that took place partly in her front yard last month.

The Chicago resident has spent the past year living with the growing horrors of anti-Semitism, but she says “the trauma of witnessing terrorism on my property was really horrible,” Reich explained. She believes officials are ‘trying to hide’ the key facts of the attackwhich 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 slept on the morning of Oct. 26. Her husband had left home 20 minutes earlier to take the couple’s four older children to synagogue when Reich said she “heard the gunshots,” believed to be suspect Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi who was a 39-year-old Orthodox man was shot. Jew going to synagogue on Sabbath morning. Abdallahi is accused of later shooting at police officers and paramedics before being shot and detained.

Reich recalled looking out the window and seeing someone running in a safety vest.

“I thought maybe it would help you,” she explained. But as police began to gather in the area where the man fled, Reich realized he saw the suspect.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT FACES HATE CRIME, TERRORISM CHARGES IN SHOOTING OF JEWISH CHICAGO MAN

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 home to find the police, worried that the victim might have been her father or husband. Police “wouldn’t tell us anything,” Reich said.

Reich ran home, where her baby was still sleeping.

“Then I heard the second round of shots,” she explained. “I ran downstairs, looked out my window and saw my neighbor crouching behind a tree with a dog.”

In the now infamous footage captured by Reich’s Ring camera, Reich calls her neighbor, asking if he wants to come inside. “When he saw me, he saw the alleged shooter. He probably would have been killed, honestly, if I hadn’t said something,” Reich reported.

As her neighbor ran away, Reich said she “saw the suspect come out of the shadow of my driveway. I was so close to him I could have smelled him if it wasn’t for the glass between us. I saw him go. stand up and shoot my neighbor”. Reich said the suspect appeared to be carrying a “big-looking” black handgun.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TO BE CHARGED WITH HATE CRIME IN JEWISH MAN’S SHOOTING INCREASING

Police are investigating a shooting on Saturday, October 26, in the West Ridge neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. (Fox32 Chicago)

“At that point,” Reich said, “I thought she was coming back for me,” noting the “loud, proud Israeli-American flag” hanging outside her home.

Reich explained that the suspect backed into her driveway before turning around and going back to commit “this suicide. push for the police.”

Meanwhile, Reich barricaded herself in her child’s room with a knife. She stayed there until a neighbor called to say the suspect had been caught.

Malka Reich witnessed part of a hate crime against a Jewish man in her Chicago neighborhood.

The Chicago Police Department did not corroborate those details, telling Fox News Digital at an Oct. 31 news conference that they declined to provide additional information about the case until they read Abdallahi’s full offer next week. Abdallahi is currently hospitalized after being injured in the shootout with the police. The department found details that Abdallahi “planned the shooting and specifically targeted people of the Jewish faith.”

Reich was effusive in his praise for the Chicago Police Department’s quick response, calling the responding police “super brave” and “supportive of the Jewish community.” She also reported that “the individual police I spoke with believed (the incident) was a hate crime,” though Chicago police waited until they had enough evidence to support this allegation before announcing it.

There was also trauma to Reich’s experience that did not end with the event itself. Given her proximity to the events, Reich initially spoke to several media entities about her experience. She found that their coverage obscured and sometimes confused the details they were conveying.

She says that since the shooting, her life has been full of struggles, headaches and insomnia.

“In addition to terrorism coming across the border, there’s also the cover-up,” Reich said, saying he felt that came from both the government and the media. Initial reports of the incident were limited in detail as officials declined to confirm much about the nature of the attack. At first, the police did not recognize that the victim was Jewish. It took Mayor Brandon Johnson days to acknowledge the religious background of Abdallahi’s Jewish victim, after an initial public statement that completely ignored it.

THE STATE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION REVEALED AT THE SHOOTING OF A JEWISH MAN IN A DEM-CONTROLLED CITY.

Reich’s Ring doorbell camera appeared to capture the suspect yelling what some reports say is an Arabic phrase, but although Chicago police acknowledged that “it was something stated by that individual while exchanging gunfire gun with the officers,” so far they have refused to do. confirms what was said despite several questions from reporters.

“The statement that was made while he was engaging with our officers is nothing that we can bring into evidence at this time that would support any reason against his actions toward our officers or toward our victim,” a police official told a news conference that it took place before hate crimes and terrorism were filed.

Fox News Digital’s conversations with various officials were even conflicted at times when it came to confirming certain information about the incident, though more details are expected to be released when the full offer is submitted 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.”

Officials have not released much information about the Abdallahi suspect. Fox News later confirmed that he is a Mauritanian national who entered the US illegally before being apprehended in California in March 2023 and released to the US.

The trauma of being Jewish in Chicago goes back much further than October 26 for Reich, who described how a growing contingent of activists with Students for Justice in Palestine would be “aggressive toward the Hillel table” when he attended the Illinois Institute of Technology. a decade ago.

The attacks on 7 October further increased that 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 he doesn’tyou still go to Northwesternto walk around their area by the lake.”

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“We’ve really changed our lives around that to try to avoid and protect our kids from that,” Reich explained.

Although Reich’s children attend private schools, she once felt that public school was always a fallback option. Now, “it’s gotten to a point where people can’t send their kids to public schools if they’re outwardly Jewish,” Reich lamented.

Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Greg Norman, Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin and Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.