One of the suspects, a 16-year-old female, in the murder of a father of two
in Beersheba, revealed the identity of the alleged murderer late Sunday.
The murder was particularly grisly as the motive for the murder appears to have been merely that the father asked the group of youths to keep the
noise down when he had been unable to get his children to sleep due to the noise the youths were making.
Although many of the eight arrested suspects had refused to admit involvement in the murder, the teenager broke down under police questioning and even returned with police to the scene to describe the events of the crime in detail.
The police reportedly cornered the suspect having found her shoe at the crime scene and based on listening to her telephone conversations, which police had wiretapped.
Some of the arrested suspects were believed to be directly tied to the killing, while others
were suspected of aiding the murderers.
The arrests followed an intensive
investigation by the the Negev police subdistrict’s central unit.
Police
Insp.-Gen. Yohanan Danino said, “We are at war, a war over the character of, and some
would say the future of, Israeli society. It can be compared to every other war
fought by Israel, and it is no less important.
We all need to join forces
to combat the plague of violence in our midst.”
Danino added that “there
are no magical solutions. There are monetary solutions. We need
more officers on the streets and in the parks. More officers in the Arab community. More
officers in entertainment districts and where youths are.”
Danino said he
would submit a proposal to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday to
increase the size of the Israel Police, adding that the organization hasn’t
grown since 1994.
After Gadi Vichman was killed in Beersheba early
Saturday, officers searched house-to-house and tried to identify the
attackers.
There has been growing outrage over the police’s failure to
prevent the killing, after it emerged that members of the public, including the
murdered man’s wife, Michal, had called to complain about youths smashing
bottles two hours before the attack.
A patrol car dispatched to the
street in response to the calls “didn’t find a thing,” police said, and left to
attend to another incident. Two hours later, Vichman left his apartment to speak
to the youths, before being headbutted and stabbed to death.
Public
Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch announced on Sunday that the police would
“investigate [its] conduct in this incident, and learn all of the lessons, as
the investigation continues.” He vowed that the “murderers will be
arrested.”
But the scope of the investigation remained unclear. While
Aharonovitch said it would be overseen by Danino, senior police sources told The
Jerusalem Post they were unaware of a major internal inquiry, saying a probe
would be conducted at the local level.
Hundreds of mourners attended
Vichman’s funeral on Sunday evening. “I keep thinking maybe he’s
clinically dead and he’ll recover. But he won’t,” his wife, Michal
Vichman, told Israel Radio before the funeral.
Earlier, Aharonovitch
called her and expressed his “deep sorrow and condolences over the terrible
loss,” adding, “I’m shocked and horrified by the painful murders that occurred
in recent days.”
He condemned “the intolerable ease with which these
criminals take lives,” and said that “this cannot continue.”
A pilot
program already in place in 13 cities, which involves training municipal
inspectors and granting them police powers, will be expanded to every city, and
CCTV cameras will continue to go up in urban centers and crime hot spots, the
minister said.
Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.
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