TA couple found dead in apparent murder suicide

Police believe the woman’s boyfriend shot her at close range and then attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head.

By BEN HARTMAN
body bag 311 (photo credit: Aloni Mor)
body bag 311
(photo credit: Aloni Mor)
A Tel Aviv woman, 18, awoke to shock and horror on Thursday when she entered her mother’s bedroom at her apartment in north Tel Aviv and found her lying dead on the floor next to her boyfriend, in what police are treating as an apparent murder-suicide.
Police believe the woman’s boyfriend shot her at close range and then attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Paramedics pronounced the woman dead and rushed the boyfriend to the city’s Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), where he died an hour later.
The murder took place in an apartment tower on Rehov Levi Eshkol, in an upscale district of north Tel Aviv. The daughter was reportedly sleeping in her bedroom upstairs Wednesday night when she heard a loud thud, but did not go downstairs to check out the disturbance.
Both the woman and her boyfriend were in their 50s and divorced. They reportedly began dating around eight months ago, and subsequently moved into the apartment building. Neighbors told the press on Thursday that they hardly knew the couple, and they never caused any disturbances.
The boyfriend was reportedly a psychiatrist, who lost his license around two years ago, due to some sort of wrongdoing.
At the scene of the crime Thursday, the woman’s ex-husband told reporters “she wanted to return to her husband and this is what happened to her.”
Sigal Bar-Tzvi, head of the north Tel Aviv police district, said, “This morning officers who arrived here on the scene found a woman shot to death lying next to a man who was also shot in the head, but still alive. As far as it seems, our first assessment is that this appears to be a murder suicide.”
Bar-Tzvi added, “The investigation is still in its initial phases, and we will check all aspects of the incident. As far as we know there were never any complaints issued to the police about violence, or anything else involving the couple.”