Afula: Masked men beat security guard, snatch his pistol at local elementary school

The assault was planned well in advance police said.

By BEN HARTMAN
Crime scene (illustrative) (photo credit: INGIMAGE)
Crime scene (illustrative)
(photo credit: INGIMAGE)
Incident is third time in past 5 years in Afula area that a school security guard has been robbed of their sidearm, which can fetch big money in the underground firearms market.
Two masked men beat and robbed a security guard outside of an Afula elementary school on Monday morning, stealing his pistol and vanishing from the scene, Northern District police said.
The assault was planned well in advance police said, with a district spokesman describing how when the guard went for his daily patrol of the campus grounds the two suspects were lying in wait, and struck him with a blunt object, knocking him unconscious.
The guard was lightly to moderately hurt and taken for medical treatment.
Police assume the robbery was criminal in nature and not linked to terrorism. The spokesman said police assume that if the two assailants were looking to commit a terror attack they would have shot the guard after taking his weapon and then continued on to attack other victims.
This assumption is bolstered by the fact that there were two previous incidents in the past five years in Afula in which a school security guard was robbed of his firearm.
Such robberies of security guards are rather common in Israel, with the firearms making their way onto the lucrative local firearms black market or the hands of organized crime.  Strict gun control in Israel means such weapons can be highly lucrative, with handguns easily fetching NIS 20,000, and assault rifles like the M-16 around 55,000 or more.


Related Tags
afula