Woman throws children out of window, attempts suicide

All three survived; single mother, an immigrant from Tajikistan had previously neglected her 4 and 5 year old children.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
MDA 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
MDA 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
A woman with a history of alcohol abuse hurled her two young children from their fourth-floor apartment in south Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning before leaping to the ground herself. All three survived the fall, but were seriously injured.
Stunned neighbors reported hearing cries from the children as the latter lay on the ground after the fall, and called emergency services.
Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated a four-year-old boy in moderate-to-serious condition and a five-year- old girl in moderate condition to the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. The boy, who sustained a head injury, has been sedated and placed on a ventilator.
The woman was hospitalized in serious condition, and underwent surgery for numerous injuries sustained in the fall. However, she was fully conscious throughout the incident, police and paramedics said.
The woman told police at the scene that she had intended to kill her two children and commit suicide, a police spokeswoman said.
Speaking from her hospital bed after the incident, the girl said her mother had cried out her father’s name as she threw the children out of the apartment.
The children's father, who was in the Ukraine during the incident, has been contacted and is on his way to Israel.
The couple met when the man had visited here as a tourist. He was later deported for overstaying his tourist visa, and the woman then traveled to the Ukraine, where the couple married.
The man later obtained Israeli citizenship and the couple returned here.
A police spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post that the woman had been detained several months ago after officers spotted her walking with her children while intoxicated.
“No criminal offenses were committed, so we made no record of the incident. The incident was reported to social services and we let her go,” the spokeswoman said.
According to media reports, the woman had been hospitalized in a psychiatric ward in the past, but the Social Services Department had not been aware of the woman’s psychiatric history.
The investigation into Tuesday’s incident is being led by Dep.-Cmdr. Yigal Sanker of the Shehunot police station.
Neighbors said the family had moved into the building on Tel Aviv’s Rehov Ma’apilei Egoz a few months ago. The mother reportedly works as a cleaner.
The woman’s sister was summoned by police for questioning on Tuesday.
Doron Vilner, a social worker from Ichilov Hospital dealing with the case, said Tuesday, “It’s very hard to say what effect an incident like this will have on the children. It’s really too soon to say.”
Vilner said that treatment of the children would be a comprehensive effort involving mental health professionals, the welfare services and the children’s father.
A determination of how the children will recover is complicated by the fact that medical personnel “don’t know what the situation in the household was like before this happened,” he said.
Ben Hartman contributed to this report.