Nada Huranieh | Pushed to Death | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

[theme music] NARRATOR: A fatal fall from a second floor window of a Detroit mansion.
- I start screaming and I run to my brother's room. NARRATOR: A devoted mom's life cut short.
- Bassel arrives, sees his estranged wife dead, and he drops in shock. NARRATOR: Was it simply just tragic misfortune?
- The physical examination did find fractures consistent with a fall of this kind.
NARRATOR: Or murder? [theme music] [melancholy music] JIM KIERTZNER: Nada Huranieh have moved here to Michigan
from Syria in the Middle East. Her husband, Bassel Altantawi, was a medical doctor
and set up a practice here in Metro Detroit. BOB ZIVIAN: Nada and Bassel had come to the United States
from Syria. They were raising their children in Farmington Hills, which is a very nice suburb of Detroit.
JIM KIERTZNER: They were devout Muslims. They were members of a local mosque, and they had three children-- their son Muhammad
and two daughters, including Aya. - My name is Aya Altantawi. My mom was a very, very kind person.
She put everybody before her and she loved us. She loved her kids. She and I, we had a pretty good relationship.
We bonded over makeup. She was very, very good at it. She was very passionate about the gym,
about working out, just feeling like the best version of herself. NARRATOR: Such was not as love of fitness
that she eventually turned her passion into a career, working as a personal trainer at her local gym
in Farmington Hills. AYA ALTANTAWI: She was becoming more independent. She was actually living her life for the first time.
She and I would go to the gym, I would do my session, she would be working out, or she would
be teaching her own clients. And then we'd work out for a little bit at the end and then we'd go home.
NARRATOR: Nada embraced the sense of freedom and independence that her new career gave her.
But her husband, Bassel, wasn't so supportive. AYA ALTANTAWI: He didn't like it.
He didn't think it was necessary for her to be independent. He thought that his role for the family
was to be the provider, so there was no need for her to be independent, because we all were reliant on him
and he was there to provide everything we needed, so he didn't like that. He wanted, I think, us to be just lost without him.
My dad was very old-school in his thinking, to put it nicely. So my mom wanting to get a job, to work at the gym,
to live her life, to him was she's becoming Americanized. And he didn't want that.
BOB ZIVIAN: There became turmoil in their marriage based on Nada's desire to become more Westernized,
and Bassel's desire to have a traditional wife within their religious practices.
He did say that once she removed the hijab, that she wasn't really a person anymore.
He didn't consider her to be a person, and that was the part that really disturbed me.
AYA ALTANTAWI: They would have arguments, but at first it was always "don't talk
about it around the kids, wait until the kids are gone." But eventually that pretense dropped
and it was just all out in the open, constant yelling and screaming for my dad towards my mom.
He was becoming violent, uncontrollable in his fits of anger, and he wanted to put us in a little box
and hide us away and lock the key. BOB ZIVIAN: He was a man who was used to being in control,
and that included in his tradition being in control of his wife. And he was losing that control, and
it was very upsetting to him. NARRATOR: In early 2016, Bassel and Nada's volatile relationship escalated to whole new levels.
- Around Valentine's Day, I remember I woke up to hearing them screaming and arguing.
And I opened my door and I went to the railing to look down and see what was going on.
And my dad was holding my mom's phone and he was like walking around the house trying
to get away from her and, like, he wouldn't give her her phone back. And he went to their bedroom and he
was standing behind the door. And my mom put her hand in the door to try to pry it open,
and my dad slammed it shut on her hand. Eventually, I called the police and they arrested him.
They took him to police station. They put a tether on him, an ankle monitor. So he wasn't allowed to come back to the house
under any circumstance. JIM KIERTZNER: Bassel would eventually be charged with domestic violence.
He would plead no contest, but it would be the beginning of the end of their marriage.
NARRATOR: Bassel was also issued with a protective order, banning him from the family home.
Shortly after his domestic violence charge, Nada started divorce proceedings while juggling her career alongside parenting
three young children as a single mom. BOB ZIVIAN: This divorce between Bassel and Nada
was definitely what I would call a high conflict divorce. There was a lot of contention.
I was concerned about Nada's general safety, but there was a court order in place that protected her.
- A lot of times nobody knew what she was going through because she didn't want to talk about her issues.
She wanted to talk about what was bothering the people that she loved, so that she can try to help them.
Most of the time, we didn't know what the details of what she was going through.
NARRATOR: Approximately 18 months after the incident between Bassel and Nada, on the morning of Monday, August 21,
2017, 14-year-old Aya was preparing for her usual school day. - It was the second week of my sophomore year of high school.
I was excited. But that day, I woke up late. Normally my mom would already be awake.
She would have had her coffee or whatever. I think I remember hearing my brother's shower on,
but nobody else was awake in the house. So I thought, "OK, let me get ready and then I'll see
where everybody else is at." I finished getting ready and I sat on my bed and I was like,
"OK, this is really strange." It's like 6:15-ish. Nobody else seems to be awake.
We're going to be late. So I called my mom but didn't get a response. So I was like, "OK, I'm going to go find
her and see what's going on." I went to the guest bedroom. That was where she would do her makeup every morning.
The window was open and I thought, "maybe, just in case, let me go look out there."
AMBER HAQUE: The guest bedroom was towards the back of the house. It was two floors up and looked out over a concrete patio,
which was 22 feet down. JIM KIERTZNER: Inside that guest bedroom, a stepladder, a bottle of cleaning solution on top of it.
Next to it, a bucket of water. All right next to that open window. When Aya looked out the window, two floors below,
she saw the lifeless body of her mother, Nada, on the patio, face up, still dressed in her pajamas.
- I start screaming and I run to my brother's room. I open his door and I said, "our mom's outside.
Our mom's outside." He was like, "what? What are you talking about?" I think he was falling behind me at this point,
and I was running out the garage to go around the house, and I just kept-- I was telling him, "come on, we have to go.
Our mom's outside." JIM KIERTZNER: Despite how distressing this was, Aya just seen her mother.
She was able to get her brother to come down to the patio where her mother was, and she called 911.
[phone rings] NARRATOR: Oakland County Police officers raced to Nada's home, while a 911 operator stayed on the line with Aya.
- Aya gave her brother Muhammad the phone at this point. He then started following the dispatcher's instructions
to give CPR to his mom. At around 6:40 AM, as Muhammad was performing CPR on his mom,
the police arrived. NARRATOR: Aya directed the officers as they arrived, while the 911 operators probed
Muhammad on what had happened. - Officer Nathan Jordan was the first one to arrive on the scene.
He checked Nada. She was still warm to the touch, but she would later be declared dead on the scene.
NARRATOR: After mother of three Nada Huranieh fatally fell from a second floor window, her 14-year-old daughter Aya,
who had found her mother's body, was unaware that she had been pronounced dead at the scene.
AYA ALTANTAWI: When they took her, I was under the impression that she was going to the hospital to be worked on.
I thought, "OK, she's going to be in the ICU, obviously critical condition," but not death.
I thought, "we probably wouldn't get any update for a couple of hours, but she was still alive."
But no, she was declared dead on the scene. But I didn't know that until hours later.
AMBER HAQUE: Aya's younger sister had been asleep during the whole incident, so the only people
who were there at the time were Aya and her brother Muhammad. So they were both interviewed by police at the scene.
In the guest bedroom, there were streaks on the window as well as an iPhone left on top of the dresser.
There was no immediate signs of a struggle or forced entry that the police could see, so they assumed that this
had been a tragic accident. Whilst Nada had been cleaning the window, she'd fallen.
AYA ALTANTAWI: They were asking us a lot of questions. They were asking what our mom's normal routine
was, if it was normal for her to clean the windows. I said, "no, that's not normal."
Any cleaning that she would do would be like washing leftover dishes from the night
before, but not cleaning the outside of a window. She would normally hire a company to come do that.
And then they were also asking about my mom's history, if she ever attempted to harm herself.
And I adamantly, immediately said no. And my brother was like, "Aya, you didn't know this but, yeah, she tried to kill herself once."
And I turned to him and I was like, "what are you talking about? No, she didn't."
And he's like, "Aya, you didn't know this. But yeah, she tried taking a bunch of pills."
I just didn't think it was true. I thought there would have been no way I didn't know about it
if our mother overdosed. It didn't make sense. No matter which way I tried to spin it,
there was no plausible explanation. NARRATOR: As Aya and her siblings were all under 18 and alone, emergency services
called their estranged father Bassel to come and look after the children. - Bassel arrives and he sees his estranged
wife dead on the patio, and he drops to his knees in shock. At this point, Aya still didn't know that her mother was dead.
NARRATOR: It was the first time Bassel had returned to the family home since the protective order.
His behavior and comments to his daughter Aya raised suspicions among investigators.
AYA ALTANTAWI: That day I had gym, so I was wearing leggings and a shirt and the back of it
had an open back cutout. My dad comes into the house, and he's like, "Aya, what are you wearing?
You're going to go to hell if you keep dressing like that." And I'm just thinking, "what is wrong with you?
This is the first time you're seeing me in over a year and a half, and the first thing you're saying to me is,
Aya, you're going to go to hell if you keep dressing like that?" HONOR DORO TOWNSHEND: Aya's father, immediately commenting
on her state of dress after Aya has just witnessed this very traumatic experience, and is a child who actually needs
consoling, is very telling about his sort of attitude, approach to family, and I believe attitude towards women
as well. NARRATOR: Still unaware that her mom Nada's fall was fatal, Aya was desperate to find out her condition.
- My dad took us to a bunch of different places that day. I think we were coming back from one
of his friends' houses. We were in the car, my dad driving, and he was on the phone with his mom talking in Arabic.
And we were pulling up into our driveway and he said, "oh, Nada's dead." Everybody gets out of the car and I say to my dad,
"when were you planning on telling me that our mother was dead?" And he turns to me and his face drops.
He starts crying. He turns to me and he-- he's like, "Aya, we have to stick together.
We only have each other now. We have to be there for each other." And he's hugging me and I just have my arms down at my sides.
I'm not hugging him back. I didn't trust him. I didn't feel safe with him. I didn't-- I didn't want to be around him.
I think it just reinforced that any hope I had for him changing, becoming empathetic, becoming a father was gone.
HONOR DORO TOWNSHEND: Security and stability are key pillars of any child's upbringing.
Just needs, basic, fundamental needs. And for Aya, all of that has been ripped away in a matter of hours.
Her mom has passed. She already has a very complicated relationship with her abusive father.
And so that's really got to put her in such a difficult and emotional position, which is a huge amount to try
and comprehend at just 14 years old. NARRATOR: On August 22, the morning after Nada had died,
the medical examiner carried out an initial autopsy on her body. She had suffered scrapes and fractures
consistent with a fall from height, but there was no blood found under her body.
She also had a scrape on her head, which had not bled as profusely as would have been expected,
and no bleeding on the brain, meaning her heart had stopped pumping before she went out the window.
JIM KIERTZNER: That means she couldn't have jumped. She couldn't have accidentally fallen.
She died before she fell on the patio below. They went back to run further tests, and at the same time,
police returned to the house with a search warrant. There were six security cameras around the outside
of the house, and they confiscated the equipment for further review. AMBER HAQUE: Unfortunately, none of the cameras
looked directly at the guest bedroom, but there was a bit of footage found that blew
the investigation open. NARRATOR: Detectives came across surveillance of the spot
where Nada's body was found. And on footage recorded at 5:54 AM, they saw Nada's body
falling to the ground. But when they looked at it again, they spotted something chilling in the shadow
of the second floor bedroom from where Nada fell. On the left of the frame, a light
appears to come on, followed by a curtain opening in the guest bedroom. A person with short hair could be seen opening a window,
before something heavy was dragged over to it and thrown out of the window just before Nada's body
fell to the patio below. [tense music] - This is not someone who's accidentally fallen to their death, they're on their own.
Someone else is there and is involved. - This fundamentally changed the investigation.
This was now a homicide, not an accident. They could clearly see somebody had pushed
Nada's body out of the window. But whose shadow was it? - The first person who came to mind
for many was Nada's estranged husband, Dr. Bassel Altantawi. NARRATOR: Bassel's history of domestic violence
after slamming a door on Nada's hand, stood out as a red flag for detectives. - The police immediately look at Bassel as a suspect
and you can understand why. In the US, it's estimated that up to nearly 50% of all female victims of homicide
have been murdered by intimate partners, past or current. And so combining that with Bassel's history
of domestic violence and abuse can really highlight why he was a probable contender for police suspicion
and why they wanted to ask him some very significant questions. NARRATOR: Investigators were also aware
that during divorce proceedings between Bassel and Nada, he had become the subject of another criminal investigation.
- Bassel had found himself in some serious legal trouble after there had been an investigation into his clinic.
BOB ZIVIAN: Bassel was convicted of health fraud in the state of Michigan. That was handled by the attorney general of the state
of Michigan at the time. - He had to pay a heavy fine, and he lost his medical license.
NARRATOR: But investigators were shocked to discover that their prime suspect, Bassel, had an airtight alibi.
As part of his protective order, Bassel wore a GPS tracking ankle monitor that fed his
location to authorities 24/7. JIM KIERTZNER: Turns out he was 20 miles away when Nada died.
Bassel Altantawi was not the killer. [tense music] NARRATOR: After detectives spotted a shadowy figure
on a surveillance camera pushing the body of 35-year-old mother of three Nada Huranieh from a second floor window,
investigators began to narrow down their hunt for her killer. - They now knew that her abusive, estranged husband
had a rock solid alibi. So the investigators now needed to know the whereabouts of the children at the time of the murder
and try to work out if somebody had broken in to kill their mom. The day after Nada was killed, police wanted to interview
both Aya and Muhammad. And their dad, Bassel, suggested that the best place to do that would be the family home.
Aya went to school. And when Bassel went to pick her up, Muhammad was being interviewed by police.
NARRATOR: Sat at the family's dining table, detectives quizzed 16-year-old Muhammad about his mom.
- Muhammad's attitude towards his parents' divorce comes up, and he acknowledges that there was some difficult feelings
there, which is understandable and happens, I'm going to say, in pretty much every case of divorce
where children might find that situation difficult. So nothing raises initial significant alarm bells.
Muhammad still seems to have a pretty strong relationship with his father, and certainly stronger than that his sisters
have with him. And perhaps that just expresses that this is a very young person who maybe doesn't understand
the violence that's occurred between his mother and father, because clearly that's disrupted
the relationship between his father and his sisters, but doesn't seem to have between them.
AMBER HAQUE: Police knew that it was only the children who'd been in the house that day.
So they began to question Muhammad about who this figure that they'd seen on the CCTV
could be. NARRATOR: Although Muhammad claimed his sister was awake before him, investigators already knew it couldn't have
been her in the guest bedroom. - The investigators had a crucial detail from this footage that the person had short hair.
So that ruled out Aya. NARRATOR: Although Muhammad denied being in the guest bedroom with his mother that morning,
police continued to press him about his whereabouts. HONOR DORO TOWNSHEND: Muhammad's story
has now shifted significantly. Now, this throws into question all of the account
that he's made prior, because it's impossible now to know which elements have been fabricated,
which elements are based in truth. - Under pressure, Muhammad's story really starts
to fluctuate quite a bit. He admits that he was in the room with his mom. He was helping her out while she was cleaning,
holding the ladder for her. But then when she fell, in shock, he took himself off to the shower.
- When you're looking at a police interview, there is a very key difference between someone
adding in additional pieces of information and changing information. And what we're starting to see here
is that Muhammad is starting to err on changing information, and that can be a real red flag for potential deceit.
NARRATOR: At this point, Bassel arrived home and stopped the interview. Following Muhammad's shock confession
that he was in the room at the time of his mom's death, police interviewed the children separately
to avoid them communicating or corroborating on one version of events. Aya used her police interview as an opportunity
to explain that she didn't want to live under the care of her abusive father. AYA ALTANTAWI: When we got to the police station
and we were being questioned, that was when I was able to make that very clear that
regardless of what happens, I am not going back home with him. And yeah, I chose to go into foster care.
Me and my sister were going to go live with a family relative who I knew, had known for the majority of my life,
and I trusted and I felt safer with them. So it was a no-brainer for me. NARRATOR: On August 24, 2017, three days
after Nada's fatal push, Aya received an unexpected message on her cell phone. AYA ALTANTAWI: I got a text from somebody that I had gone
to middle school with, and he had texted me saying, "Aya, I am so sorry for your loss,
but do you think he did it?" And I was like, "do I think who did what?" He said, "I'm so sorry, you didn't hear?
They're charging your brother?" I found out from a middle school classmate that my brother was being charged
with the death of my mother. I was in shock. It was more like an out-of-body experience
where, OK, yeah, I went through this, and I'm telling you all about it, but I'm not feeling the emotions
that are connected with it. I'm just-- I don't know, I-- JIM KIERTZNER: On the day this case happened,
I went out to the family home, tried to talk to neighbors, but they didn't know this family very well.
The family kept to themselves. But after a few days of it being in the news, Nada's friends started calling police.
Nada would tell them that Muhammad, her son, blamed her for the trouble in the family
and that she would always have her daughters, but she was dead to her son. NARRATOR: Processing the news that her brother had
been arrested and charged for the murder of his own mother, Aya reflected on Muhammad's behavior
in the lead up to Nada's death. - He was becoming a lot more assertive, a lot more violent.
I think he genuinely thought that now that our dad's out of the house, he has to step up and be the man
and put us in our place. My brother was in contact with my dad a lot. Just became a little like spy essentially for my dad
because this was during their divorce case. BOB ZIVIAN: I had an encounter with Muhammad
that led me to believe that Muhammad had taken his father's side in the divorce.
It's actually a blizzard here in Michigan, and I parked my car close to the house.
I met with Nada. I had not seen Muhammad. And then when I went to leave, when I went to get into my car,
Muhammad was actually standing right behind my car, and he seemed to be recording my license plate.
The only thing I could think of that made sense under the circumstances that he was going to be reporting to his father.
AYA ALTANTAWI: So he was trying to find anything he could to give to my dad to use as leverage is
my guess in the divorce case. So it made sense that he did it. So I still thought, "OK, maybe somehow he accidentally did it
or he didn't mean to do it," or I don't know, I guess I didn't fully believe that it was 100% intentional.
- Aya is a young and vulnerable girl in this situation, whose entire life has been torn
apart in a matter of moments. And so, of course, she's clinging on to the hope of her brother's innocence
because she's already lost her mother and her father, and now this is her potentially losing her brother, too.
NARRATOR: While Muhammad awaited trial for the murder of his own mother, his father, Bassel, hired a veteran defense
attorney named Michael Ciano. AMBER HAQUE: One of the first things that Michael did was highlight that the day after Nada died,
Muhammad was interviewed by three police officers without his dad or an attorney present.
He could have been coerced by the officers. He hadn't been read his rights, and that whatever he said in that interview
couldn't then be admissible in the court case. NARRATOR: The court ruled in their favor,
meaning prosecutors were unable to call in Muhammad's kitchen table interview for the trial.
But in November 2017, during a preliminary court hearing, new details of Nada's autopsy report
were revealed to the public for the first time. The key finding, which investigators
were already aware of, was that Nada had died by asphyxiation. She had been smothered to death.
Armed with evidence that Nada had been murdered, investigators continued to build their case
and discovered that Muhammad resented his mother for the failure of his parents' marriage,
and had taken his father's side during the divorce. AYA ALTANTAWI: In the very beginning of the divorce case,
our mother would ask him where he was going, when he was going to meet up with our dad,
and he wouldn't tell her. But then he would ask us where we were going and expect answers.
Or when she would try to take his phone because he was texting her dad and he wasn't supposed to,
he would not let her, and it would turn into its own physical altercation, and he would then take her phone instead.
It was just very bizarre. AMBER HAQUE: Despite her brother's arrest and his murder
charge, Aya was still holding on to that hope that he might be innocent. - I lost my dad long before my mom died.
I lost my mom. I didn't want to lose my brother, too. I think that's part of the reason why I was not
fully accepting that it was 100% intentionally premeditated murder. There has to be some other explanation.
Maybe he did do it, but how do you kill your mother? How do you kill anyone, much less your mother?
NARRATOR: After extended legal wranglings over the use of a police interview, Muhammad Altantawi spent years awaiting trial
for the murder of his mother, Nada Huranieh, who had been suffocated before being pushed
out of a second floor window. - In March 2022, nearly five years after Nada's death,
Muhammad Altantawi's murder trial began. - Muhammad Altantawi would go on trial,
charged as an adult with first-degree premeditated murder. BOB ZIVIAN: I was not at the trial.
I had, at that point, moved jobs and moved back to the prosecutor's office, who was prosecuting Muhammad.
So I had nothing to do with the prosecution of the case, by order of the prosecutor.
NARRATOR: Although Muhammad Altantawi was only 16 years old when he killed his mom, he was tried as an adult
because Michigan State law allows prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults in cases of serious offenses,
such as murder. JIM KIERTZNER: A case like this is extremely rare, and there's a name for it: matricide, maternal homicide,
where a child kills his or her own mother. The death of a mother at the hands of a child?
Almost unheard of. In opening statements at the trial, prosecutors focused on the motive and
also the family dynamics, that Muhammad had a hatred for his mother, her growing
need for more independence, her new Americanized lifestyle. And the timing, Nada was set to give
a deposition against Muhammad's father in the divorce. He wanted to stop that. BOB ZIVIAN: Nada came to my office on a Friday
before she passed away to prepare for a deposition that was to be held the next week, where
Bassel's attorney would question Nada, and I, in turn, would question Bassel. And I got the impression that she
did not think that the deposition was ever going to take place. Why that is? I don't know.
I was very concerned about it, and I assumed that Nada knew something that I didn't know that was going
to happen between the meeting in my office on Friday and the deposition, which was scheduled for the next week.
As it turned out, we'll never know because Nada passed away a couple days later.
- This case wasn't just about the physical facts of who was where and when. It was about a family split down the middle,
and whether hatred between a father, wife, and a son could really cause someone to kill.
NARRATOR: The big question for prosecutors was whether they would be able to convince
a jury that a son was capable of killing his own mother. Part of the prosecution's case focused on inconsistencies
at the crime scene. - The prosecutor explained to the jury that this was not an accident, that Nada
had been suffocated before she fell, and that the scene had been staged. The ladder next to the window with a cleaning bottle
of solution on top of it. One detective testified, that's not a solution that's used to clean windows.
And next to Nada's body on the patio below was a towel, a cloth that had some solution in it that may have also
been used to suffocate Nada. NARRATOR: Then it was time for the prosecution's key evidence:
the surveillance video footage. - Prosecution showed the jury, the video evidence, the shadows
from the surveillance cameras. A person with short hair dragging something over to the window, then hoisting it out the window
just moments before Nada's body would hit the ground. They also pointed out that inside
the house were only the three children and only one had short hair-- Muhammad. NARRATOR: At one point in the video,
Muhammad could be seen giving his mother CPR. But according to the prosecution, only half-heartedly.
Furthermore, while on the phone to emergency services, he was not giving her chest compressions at all
and was simply counting. MUHAMMAD ALTANTAWI: 1, 2, 3, 4. DISPATCHER: 1, 2, 3, 4.
MUHAMMAD ALTANTAWI: 1, 2, 3, 4. NARRATOR: Prosecutors suggested that this was because Muhammad already knew his mother was dead.
[tense music] Then they highlighted key evidence from Muhammad Altantawi's phone.
- Prosecutors knew it would be extremely difficult to convince a jury that a 16-year-old son would kill his own mother,
but they had more good circumstantial evidence, including Muhammad's phone records.
In fact, he had his mother in his phone as a contact named "Dog." AYA ALTANTAWI: To call somebody a dog and your own mom
nonetheless, who did nothing to deserve that, just why? - Muhammad saving his mother's name as Dog in his phone
is incredibly misogynistic language and really implies a hatred not just towards his mother,
but to women. And I think we can really see a potential influence there from his father's own attitudes and behaviors
towards women in his life and how that might have impacted then on Muhammad's own opinions
and behaviors, too. NARRATOR: The prosecution also used Muhammad's phone to demonstrate motive.
- Just weeks before she was killed, Nada texted her son Muhammad to tell him she would have to testify in the divorce case.
She would have to say truthfully about what happened with abuse and misconduct. Prosecutors argue that Muhammad wanted to protect his father,
that this had serious legal and personal implications, that he wanted to stop Nada from testifying
to protect his father. But there was more strong evidence. Prosecutors presented to the jury
that Muhammad took pictures of the guest room and that open window and sent them to his father
three weeks before Nada was killed. Also revealed was further evidence from his phone.
In the early morning hours of the day that Nada died, there were phone calls between Muhammad and his father.
He had told police he was asleep before learning of his mother's death. AMBER HAQUE: Even though the trial raised some questions
about what Bassel knew about what Muhammad was planning to do to Nada, Bassel Altantawi has
never been charged with anything in connection to her murder. - Aya testified at that the trial
about what was going on in their family five years earlier, when she was only 14.
- I didn't see it as testifying against my brother. I was there to testify and tell the truth, and that was it.
One of the things that I addressed in court while testifying was the fact that my brother
saw the divorce as being a splitting the family to two sides. He and our father, and the other being my mother and I,
and that our agenda was to destroy our father's life, to take his money, to take his house,
to ruin his career, his life, which wasn't the case. NARRATOR: In response to the prosecution,
Muhammad Altantawi's defense team laid out their arguments in an attempt to introduce
reasonable doubt to the jury. They pointed out that there was no way of proving that the person in the window
was Muhammad, or even the size, age, or sex of the person casting the shadow. - The defense also made the case that Muhammad was skinny,
and there was no way he could overpower his own mother, who had been working out in a gym.
The defense attorney argued the timeline was too tight. Nada's body fell at 5:53 in the morning,
the children woke up at 6:00. Not enough time to commit the murder, to clean up the scene,
and to hide evidence. NARRATOR: On Monday, March 14, 2022, after deliberating for only two hours,
the jury found Muhammad Altantawi guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. JIM KIERTZNER: Six months later at sentencing,
Muhammad continued to declare his innocence. NARRATOR: Then came the victim impact
statements from Aya and Muhammad Altantawi's father, Bassel. AYA ALTANTAWI: He was trying to use everybody else's story
to gain sympathy, and he didn't even talk about how he was sad about our mom. He didn't talk about our mom at all.
NARRATOR: As Bassel left the courtroom, Aya followed him to the lobby to confront him.
- I got in his face and I started yelling at him, and I would have gladly punched him
if I didn't have six deputies holding me back, and I wouldn't have regretted it.
I don't think he understands why I felt that way. I don't think he ever will understand
why I felt that way, because I don't think he's capable of empathizing with anybody.
I don't think he's capable of thinking about how other people could be affected from his actions.
It's sad for me to think about being related to such pathetic people. NARRATOR: Muhammad was sentenced to 35 to 60 years
in prison, with the judge saying he understood the consequences of his actions and was deserving of such a stiff penalty.
- I have not had any contact with my brother since the trial or his sentencing ended.
Have I thought about it? Yes. And the only reason that I would talk to him, again, not because I want to
but because she was also his mother. And I recognized that I am the only person who
would be able to offer him the opportunity for me to go to her grave and have him be on the phone
and say whatever he would want to her. And it doesn't mean that I like him, that I love him, that I support him,
that I want anything to do with him, that I want a relationship with him. It means absolutely nothing other
than I'm presenting you with an opportunity that I don't think anybody else would give you.
NARRATOR: Since her mother's death in 2017 and the pain of the trial, Aya has committed herself
to helping other victims of crime find justice for their loved ones. - My career plans are to go to law school,
become a criminal prosecutor, and if somebody's going through something like domestic abuse
or whatever the case might be, when they feel like they can relate to me or my mom or any part of anything
that we went through, I want people to know and see that I might be biased, but I don't
think I turned out too terribly, all things considered. And your life isn't defined by what happens
to you, what people do to you. Your life is what you want it to be, what you make of it,
and that's all that matters. I remember my mom as somebody who was incredibly selfless
and kind and caring. And she put everybody before her and didn't want anybody to ever worry
about what she was going through and didn't tell almost anybody what she was going through.
And I know she would want everybody that she loved, everybody in her life to be happy
and to not dwell on what happened to her. And it sucks that I don't have her, but knowing that she can't be here anymore is--
that's enough for me. [melancholy music] [theme music]

The horrific case of mother of three Nada Huranieh, who is found dead on the patio beneath an open second-floor window at home by her 14-year-old daughter.

Pushed to Death tells the stories of people who tragically passed away after appearing to suffer a fatal fall in suspicious circumstances.

For More FilmRise Check Out Our Other Channels: FilmRise Television: https://www.youtube.com/⁨@FilmRiseTelevision⁩ FilmRise Movies: https://www.youtube.com/@FilmRiseMovies Highway to Heaven - Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@HighwaytoHeavenFullEpisodes

Brief Summary

Nada Huranieh's death leads to her son Muhammad's trial for murder amid family turmoil and domestic violence issues.

Key points

A Fatal Fall. A devoted mom's life is cut short after a fall from a second floor window.
Escalating Tensions. Nada's desire for independence leads to turmoil in her marriage with Bassel.
The Shocking Discovery. Aya discovers her mother's lifeless body after a fall, leading to a frantic 911 call.
A Mother's Death. Nada is pronounced dead at the scene, leaving her children in shock.
A Chilling Revelation. Surveillance footage reveals a shadowy figure pushing Nada out of the window, changing the investigation.
A Shocking Revelation. Aya learns from a classmate that her brother is being charged with their mother's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was becoming violent, uncontrollable in his fits of anger.

Aya describes her father's behavior.

4:07WatchJan 22, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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