The murder of a Farmington Hills mother that made headlines across the U.S. and beyond is the focus of this Friday’s Dateline NBC episode.
“The Shadow in the Window,” premiering at 10 p.m., explores the 2017 slaying of Nada Huranieh by her 16-year-old son, Muhammad Altantawi. Huranieh, 35, died from asphyxiation and also had a blunt force injury to her head; her lifeless body was thrown from an upper level window of the family’s upscale home on Howard Road, landing on the patio. Altantawi tried to stage the homicide as an accidental fall from a ladder, but the jury didn’t buy it. At the conclusion of a 2022 trial in Oakland County Circuit Court, he was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder and subsequently sentenced to 35-60 years in prison.
Among those featured in “The Shadow in the Window,” is Huranieh’s daughter and Altantawi’s sister, Aya Altantawi, 14 years old when her mother was killed. In the Dateline NBC episode, she talks about discovering her mother’s body and the aftermath.
The program also includes interviews with Oakland County Chief Medical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic, MD, attorney Michael Schiano — one of Muhammad Altantawi’s trial lawyers, and Khaled Abou El Fadl, UCLA professor who has expertise in Islam and Shari’ah law. According to Aya Altantawi’s testimony during her brother’s trial, Muhammad Altantawi had disdain for his mother’s defiance of traditional Arab culture — including working outside the home, not wearing a hijab and dressing in clingy clothing — and her plan to divorce.
Muhammad Altantawi, 23, is locked up in Chippewa Correctional Facility in Michigan’s upper peninsula. He’s appealing the conviction.
Sentence handed to man who murdered another at Auburn Hills hotel
More sex crime charges for Waterford man accused of abusing young boys