An devout Jewish couple revealed their shock when they discovered that their neighbor, whose wife had lately knocked on their door with a housewarming present, was accused of firebombing a nonviolent pro-Israel march in Boulder.
The Costello family had barely started unloading boxes in their new Colorado Springs home when the FBI arrived and informed them that their neighbor, illegal Egyptian immigrant Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, had been detained for allegedly hurting 12 people in front of the Boulder County courthouse.
“When I get home, the FBI is waiting at my door.” “That’s a scary moment,” David Costello told Fox News Digital. “They told us, ‘You’re not in trouble,’ but then they asked if we knew what happened in Boulder.”
The Costellos stated they knew the Solimans and had met Soliman’s wife when she showed up on their front steps with cupcakes to welcome them to the neighborhood.
“The wife came over and gave us some cupcakes,” David told me. “We keep kosher, so we couldn’t eat them, but we accepted them and then we just sort of threw them away.”
Unaware of the previous contact, FBI officials informed the Costellos that they needed to be aware of the terror assault because of their visible Jewish identification, according to the couple, who proudly displayed a mezuzah on the door.
“He had to have driven right past our house to get to Boulder,” David told me. “He undoubtedly observed us moving in [with a] tzitzit and a kippah, and my wife’s head was covered. We were spared an attack thanks to Hashem. It’s fairly evident that we’re Jewish; he could have easily thrown a Molotov cocktail at our door—we don’t have an exit out the back—which would have been completely devastating for us.”
Because the Costellos do not use phones or any devices on religious holidays, they had no access to news while observing Shavuot. Their sole knowledge of the occurrence came from people knocking on their door, asking for interviews, and eventually the FBI explaining what had occurred.
“I didn’t realize how big the story was until I turned on my phone after the holiday,” Rivkah, David’s wife, explained. “We moved here to lie low, but suddenly we were in the headlines.”
The couple had fled their previous neighborhood because of frequent anti-Israel activities and unease in a Muslim-majority area. David stated they were looking for “a place to go and be under the radar.”
Soliman is being jailed on a $10 million bond and faces a number of accusations, including attempted murder and federal hate crimes. Authorities said he acknowledged to preparing the attack for more than a year and stated a desire to harm “Zionist people.”
“It’s unnerving,” Rivkah stated. “They stated bail was set at $10 million, but there’s still a chance he may be released—and we live right across the street. We have five younger children. “This is terrifying.
“I hope people understand what that means for a Jewish family living across the street from someone accused of terrorism,” she told me.
