Police: Rock throwing may have caused deadly car crash

Incident in which father, baby killed when car overturned in Kiryat Arba had been deemed accidental; police find bloody rock in car, shattered window.

Kiryat Arba fatal car accident_311 (photo credit: Reuven Reuven)
Kiryat Arba fatal car accident_311
(photo credit: Reuven Reuven)
Police suspect that rock throwing was the cause of the car accident that killed Hillel Palmer, 25, and his one-year-old son Jonathan on Friday, Army Radio reported on Sunday.
The car turned over on Route 60  in the West Bank, between Kiryat Arba and Karmei Tzur. Soldiers who were at the scene claimed that they did not witness rocks being thrown toward the road, but at a court hearing the police representative said that there was reasonable suspicion that the car veered off the road due to a rock shattering the windshield.
RELATED:Man, baby killed when car overturns near Kiryat ArbaThe police said that the front window was shattered, and a large rock was found inside the car with Palmer's blood on it. People close to the victims claimed that the police quickly determined it as a car accident in order not to inflame the region.
"So far initial external examinations of the deceased have raised suspicions that he was probably hit by some sort of object thrown by a passing car," Judea and Samaria Police said, adding that nothing had been proven.
The family of Palmer reached an agreement with the state on Sunday to have blood samples taken from the bodies of Palmer and his infant son Yehonatan.
The agreement came after the State Attorney's Office petitioned the High Court of Justice after Palmer's family refused the state permission to conduct an autopsy on the bodies, to determine the cause of death.
A police representative said over the past month in Hebron, 18 cases of  stone throwing at Israeli vehicles from cars were reported, according to Israel Radio.
An initial Traffic Police investigation found that the Subaru was traveling northbound at apparent high speed, and overturned into a ditch, striking a stone wall. The vehicle flipped in the air twice before falling into the roadside ditch.
Yaakov Lappin , Joanna Paraszczuk and Ben Hartman contributed to this report.