Migrant worker indicted for murder of wife in J’lem

Jerusalem court indicts 23-year-old Eritrean man accused of stabbing his wife to death last month.

By MELANIE LIDMAN
311_African migrants (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
311_African migrants
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
A 23-year-old Eritrean man accused of stabbing his wife to death in the capital’s Bayit Vegan neighborhood last month was indicted in the Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday.
The state requested that Alam Gevriyahu Tiamoh be held in detention for the remainder of the legal proceedings because he posed a flight risk.
Tiamoh and his wife, Helen Tekla, also from Eritrea, had been in Israel for a number of months after entering illegally sometime in 2010. The two lived in the city’s Mahaneh Yehuda area and worked for a cleaning company. They were married three months ago.
Two months after their marriage, following several incidents of domestic violence, Tekla left her husband and went to live with relatives elsewhere in the city.
She did not file a complaint with authorities.
On January 24, around 9 p.m., Tiamoh allegedly went to confront Tekla at a bus stop on Rehov Frank in Bayit Vegan, close to where Tekla was employed as a cleaner in a private home.
When a bus arrived at the stop and Tekla tried to get on, Tiamoh took out a knife and stabbed her in the neck, stomach and right thigh.
Magen David Adom paramedics administered CPR before evacuating her to Hadassah-University Medical Center, Ein Kerem, but she died during the night.
Tiamoh fled the scene after throwing the knife into a courtyard. He was apprehended by police four days later in Tel Aviv.
Jerusalem District police said this was the first incident of violent crime within the foreign worker and migrant community in the capital.