They Thought Their Mom Died by Suicide but Her Son Killed Her. Inside the Murder

The investigation into Nada Huranieh’s untimely death took a shocking turn when detectives found key surveillance footage.

On Aug. 21, 2017, Huranieh was found by her daughter, Aya Altantawi, at her home in Farmington Hills, Mich. She saw her mother’s body on the ground outside their home and noticed that she seemed to have fallen from an upstairs window.

Authorities responded to the scene shortly afterward and Huranieh was pronounced dead. At first, it appeared to be a suicide or accidental fall, since the second-story window was open.

However, upon examining her body, authorities discovered that Huranieh had actually suffered blunt force trauma and asphyxiation prior to her fall. In addition, surveillance footage showed a figure in the shadows of the window at the time of her death, according to court records.

Shortly afterward, police discovered that her then 16-year-old son, Muhammad Altantawi, had been angry with his mother over her decision to divorce his father, Bassel Altantawi. Police theorized that Muhammad smothered her with a poisoned cloth before pushing her from a window.

He was arrested later that month and was charged with his mother’s murder. Muhammad maintained his innocence in his 2022 trial, but he was found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder that September. He’s since been sentenced to 35 to 60 years in prison.

Here’s everything to know about Nada Huranieh’s murder.

Nada Huranieh was a mother of three living in Michigan

Huranieh was a 35-year-old mother of three children who was raised in Syria, per Dateline, which featured the case in September 2024. She met her future husband, Dr. Bassel Altantawi, in Syria and they moved to the United States together. While Bassel opened an urgent care clinic, she raised their three children.

“My mom was a lot more extroverted, loved going to events, that sort of thing,” Aya, who was 14 years old at the time of her mom’s death, recalled to Dateline. “She wasn’t really being submissive anymore. She wasn’t being like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do whatever you want.’ ‘Oh, I won’t go to work’ or ‘I won’t get an education,’ that sort of thing.”

Huranieh, who was Muslim, became a certified fitness instructor at the Franklin Athletic Club in Southfield, Mich., and stopped wearing her hijab, per the Detroit Free Press.

Her decision reportedly created tension with her husband, and Aya claimed to Dateline that they got into a screaming match and physical altercation about a year and a half before her death. Aya called the police, and Bassel was charged with domestic violence, to which he pleaded no contest.

Huranieh and Bassel began to separate, and she even began dating someone from her gym, Aya alleged. At the time of her death, they were in the midst of a tumultuous divorce, and Bassel was not living at their house, per court records.

She was found dead in 2017, and investigators initially thought that it was a suicide or accidental fall

Around 6 a.m. on Aug. 21, 2017, Aya found her mother’s unconscious body on the patio of their home in Farmington Hills, Mich. Huranieh appeared to have fallen 29 feet from an open second-story window, per court records.

“I remember screaming but it, it’s like in those movies or where you read in the books where it’s like the character’s like, ‘Oh I screamed, but I didn’t realize it was coming from me,’ ” Aya recalled to Dateline.

Aya alerted her older brother, Muhammad, and called 911. She alerted the dispatcher that they needed an ambulance, and the dispatcher directed Muhammad on how to perform CPR on Huranieh.

When paramedics arrived at the scene, they were unable to find a pulse on Huranieh, and she was pronounced dead.

Police began investigating shortly afterward and initially theorized that Huranieh had accidentally fallen to her death or died by suicide. They came to that hypothesis after finding a ladder, cleaning solution and a rag near the window that made it look like she was cleaning and had fallen out the window.

Huranieh’s autopsy and surveillance footage later ruled it a homicide

Despite Huranieh appearing to have fallen out the window, medical examiners investigated her injuries postmortem and determined that she had actually died before she fell.

Dr. Ruben Ortiz-Reyes performed the autopsy and later testified in court that Huranieh died from asphyxiation with a contributing cause of blunt force head trauma, according to Click on Detroit. He said that he discovered a bruise on Huranieh’s lower lip that was sustained before her death.

In addition to the new medical findings, police also began to suspect foul play was at hand when they started looking at footage from six surveillance cameras that were recording the home that morning.

The surveillance footage, which was later shown in the trial, showed a light casting shadows that appeared to be someone lifting a figure to the window, just seconds before Huranieh’s fall was captured on another camera.

“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 testified in court, per WXYZ Detroit.

Police then began to theorize that someone had killed Huranieh that morning and staged the scene to make it look like she was cleaning the window, which even had “spray marks” from the cleaning liquid. They alleged that the killer then threw Huranieh out the second-story window.

Huranieh’s son, Muhammad, was arrested in connection with her murder but maintained his innocence

Shortly after police determined that Huranieh’s death was a homicide rather than a suicide or accidental fall, they began to zone in on the men home at the time of her death. Her estranged husband, who was on probation for the domestic violence charge, was ruled out after his tracking device data placed him miles away from the home.

When detectives first questioned Muhammad, he claimed that he found out about his mother’s death when his sister alerted him to her body on the patio, according to WXYZ Detroit. However, when police told him about the surveillance footage they discovered, Muhammad changed his story and claimed that he was helping his mom clean when he saw her fall. He later alleged that he was holding the ladder.

“He admitted to looking out the window and then he said he wanted to believe this didn’t happen, so he went back and took a shower and went back to bed,” Sgt. Wehby testified.

Less than a week after Huranieh died, Muhammad was arrested and charged in connection with her murder. He pleaded not guilty.

The case didn’t go to trial until 2022 because of delays in determining the legality of police questioning Muhammad as a minor. Despite the holdup, his trial began in March 2022.

Aya testified in her brother’s trial and alleged that Muhammad had a tumultuous relationship with his mom over her decision to divorce their father.

“When the divorce case started, he was very against it because he had kind of saw it as my mother was trying to take my father’s money, my father’s house, destroy our family, rip our family apart,” she said in court, per Dateline.

Prosecutors alleged that Muhammad smothered Huranieh with a pillow or possible toxin-soaked cloth to kill her before he hauled her body out the window. They pointed to Aya’s claims as a motive and alleged that Muhammad had blamed his mom for their familial problems.

However, Muhammad’s defense team claimed that he had no motive because he was planning on moving in with his dad. They further argued that the surveillance video showed a shadow that may not have been Muhammad.

In 2022, Muhammad was found guilty of his mom’s murder and was sentenced to 35 to 60 years in prison during an emotional hearing

In March 2022, a jury found Muhammad guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. Throughout the trial and afterward, he vehemently denied killing his mother.

“I didn’t smother, asphyxiate, anesthetize or otherwise kill my mother,” he said, per The Oakland Press.

Muhammad faced his sentencing hearing in September 2022, but by that time, he fired his legal team and represented himself. His decision caused the scheduled hearing to last hours, as he constantly objected to claims and accused the judge and prosecution of “grabbing at hairs trying to find anything to use against [him].”

He also told the judge that he was wrongly convicted of “the worst crime imaginable.” Muhammad claimed that there were “millions of other suspects [the police] allowed to go unnoticed.” He alleged that “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.

Meanwhile, Aya shared two victim impact statements on behalf of herself and a second from her family in Syria. She emotionally recalled how her mom was “kind and generous to everyone in her life” and had “the most amazing heart and soul.”

Aya also took the opportunity to directly speak to her brother and told him, “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 … I have lost everything. I love you, but will never forget what you did. My only concern is your selfish, delusional state of mind. You made your bed, now you have to lie in it.”

Bassel gave his own victim impact statement, in which he gushed about his son and claimed that he was a loving person who had never been in trouble. His statement was cut short after the judge ruled that he was “glorifying” Muhammad instead of speaking about his grief.

The judge sentenced Muhammad to 35 to 60 years in prison and noted that he still “views himself as the victim, and not actually his mother.”

As of December 2025, Muhammad is serving his sentence at Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in Chippewa County, per inmate records.