Woman murdered by husband in front of their daughter

Rishon Lezion police had received three previous complaints from wife.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
knife 88 (photo credit: )
knife 88
(photo credit: )
The brutal murder of a Rishon Lezion woman by her husband on Sunday morning must "be closely examined" to ensure that no oversights were made by police, the city's station commander, Ch.-Supt. Amishai Peled, told The Jerusalem Post, after it emerged that the murdered woman had filed three previous complaints against her husband. The 63-year-old woman was stabbed to death in front of their 13-year-old daughter, police said. Her husband, who admitted to carrying out the murder, was arrested. An initial inquiry found that a heated argument that erupted between the couple soon deteriorated into a violent confrontation. The husband then allegedly pulled out a knife and stabbed his wife. The couple's daughter, who witnessed the incident, ran to a neighbor and called for help, saying, "Come quick! Dad murdered mom!" Police arrived at the scene together with paramedics, who tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the woman. "This woman had her life ended in the cruelest way by her husband. We as police won't accept this quietly and say we did all that needed to be done," Peled said by phone. "We have to ask ourselves if the writing was on the wall. From an initial look at this case, I don't think it really was. And if it was, it wasn't written strongly enough to cause us to act differently," he added. "When I look at this case, I find that we did take the most fundamental steps that needed to be taken. When the woman filed earlier complaints, we sent a patrol car to the address and brought the husband into the station. Because there was no violence in previous incidents [but only property damage], we did not have cause to charge him," Peled said. "When we identify significant danger, we act very aggressively," he continued. "In this case, we saw a low-risk assessment, so he was not arrested earlier, I'm sorry to say. At the same time, we are certainly checking ourselves and asking, could we have acted differently?" The police commander said the husband suffered from mental illness - a difficult situation for police to handle, as officers are not authorized to forcefully hospitalize him. "We can only do that with consent," he said, unlike other authorities such as the district psychiatrist. "Israel Police and Rishon Police see violence against women and violence in the family as one of the most severe problems," Peled said. "We act with near-zero tolerance, but we can only act according to the law. We can't take action unless the law has been violated." "At the same time, this is a tragic and brutal murder, and we will scrutinize ourselves," he said.