In August 2017, the daughter of Nada Huranieh found her mother’s body outside of their home. It appeared that she must have fallen out the window. Authorities believed that she either fell out of the window by accident or chose to die by suicide. Surveillance footage, however, revealed a shadowy figure in the window at the time of her death. Soon, detectives turned their sights on her son, Muhammad Altantawi, who was allegedly mad at Huranieh for divorcing her husband.
The couple had split up some time before her death after her husband became mad that she started working outside of the home and began eschewing their traditional Muslim beliefs.
Around 6 a.m. on August 21, 2017, Huranieh’s unconscious body was found on the patio by her daughter Aya Altantawi, who was 14 at the time, People reported. According to court documents, the mother fell 29 feet out the window. The teen called her then 16-year-old brother Muhammad and then called 911. The dispatcher guided him through administering CPR.
When paramedics arrived, they were unable to find a pulse, and Huranieh was declared dead at the scene. Police began investigating, and after finding a ladder, cleaning solution, and a rag near the window, they hypothesized that she either died by suicide or fell.
Farmington Hills Police officer Nathan Jordan was the first responding officer on the scene, Click On Detroit reported in November 2017. Jordan said Muhammad was kneeling over his mother and giving her chest compressions while talking to a 911 dispatcher on the phone when he arrived.
According to Jordan, no blood was found near the body. “The positioning of her body was not what you would expect falling out of the window,” he said.
Jordan asked Muhammad questions at the home, and the teen said he hadn’t seen his mother since the night before. The officer claimed the boy didn’t show any emotion while being asked questions.
Then Dr. Ruben Ortiz-Reyes testified about his autopsy findings. He told the court that Huranieh’s cause of death was asphyxiation, with a contributing cause being blunt force trauma., according to Click On Detroit. He also found a bruise on her lower lip that she likely got when she was alive. The injuries on her body happened after she fell, Ortiz-Reyes claimed.
Security footage from the home showed 35-year-old Nada Huranieh falling to the ground, with a “shadow cast around her body before she fell out of the window,” WXYZ reported in 2017. According to detectives, the shadow indicated a struggle before she fell out the window.
“It appears that the person that was in the room looks out the window that the body came out of. Then it disappears, then there’s another appearance by a person, looks like they might be putting the ladder in front of the window,” Farmington Hills Police Sgt. Richard Wehby said in court.
A forensic pathologist said Nada Huranieh was smothered before she fell out the window. Less than a week after his mother died, her son was arrested in her murder and charged with first-degree premeditated murder. His trial began in 2022, and he was sentenced in September, the Oakland Press reported at the time. Muhammad was ordered to spend the next 35 to 60 years in prison.
“I didn’t smother, asphyxiate, anesthetize or otherwise kill my mother,” he said during the sentencing hearing. He said he was arrested for “the worst crime imaginable” and maintained he was wrongly convicted, the Press added. The then 21-year-old claimed police had “millions of other suspects they allowed to go unnoticed.” He also said “no one ever grieved my mother more than me.”
“I don’t care if I’m sentenced to 40 years or 80,000 years. I don’t care…nothing I go through in life or have gone through in the last five years — nothing I go through will ever compare to what my mom went through,” he said.
His sister shared two victim impact statements during the hearing. “I don’t know why you did what you did, I knew you hated us but I didn’t know you hated us this much,” she said to her brother.
“I have lost everything…I love you, but will never forget what you did. My only concern is your selfish, delusional state of mind,” she continued. “You made your bed, now you have to lie in it.”
Currently, Muhammad is serving his sentence at Kinross Correctional Facility in Chippewa County, Michigan, according to inmate records reported by People.
