Man kidnaps, murders his two children before taking his own life in Tel Aviv

Father throws kids aged three and five off an 11-story building in north Tel Aviv after kidnapping them from their mother's home.

By BEN HARTMAN
Building where man jumped off with 2 kids 370 (photo credit: Magen David Adom spokesman)
Building where man jumped off with 2 kids 370
(photo credit: Magen David Adom spokesman)
A man kidnapped his two young children from their mother’s house in Bat Hefer in the Sharon area on Wednesday, then drove them to north Tel Aviv and threw them off an 11-story building before jumping to his death.
The murder-suicide was reported at about 4 p.m. that day, when witnesses told police they saw two children falling from a building on Eliyahu Berlin Street in Ramat Aviv, before seeing a man jump after them.
Eli Gur, 52, was pronounced dead at the scene, along with his two children, Yahav, five, and Eden, four.
Gur stormed into his wife Ronit’s home in Bat Hefer on Wednesday afternoon, and choked her until she collapsed, Sharon police subdistrict spokesman Eran Yehuda told The Jerusalem Post. Gur then snatched the two children and took off, while Ronit recovered and called police.
Yehuda said police deployed a helicopter to help search for Gur, and sent out an all-points bulletin for his car. They also tried in vain to locate his cellphone.
Yehuda said that Sharon police commanders were at Gur’s house when they received the news that the bodies had been found. Forty-eight minutes passed between the time Gur snatched his kids from their mother and threw them to their deaths in north Tel Aviv.
Gur had been living with his brother at their mother’s house in Or Yehuda, a city near Tel Aviv, after she died two months earlier.
The spokesman said there was a restraining order against Gur, banning him from being at the Bat Hefer house or near his wife.
He was also prohibited from watching the children without the supervision of social workers.
Police secured the restraining order after Gur supposedly threatened to kill his wife a little over a month ago.
That threat followed an indictment against Gur last June, over an incident in which he threatened to kill Ronit, then deflated her car tires and cut up her credit cards and check book.
Tel Aviv Police said on Wednesday that Gur had worked for a few months as an officer in the Dan subdistrict in 1995, but was released when he was deemed unfit for duty.
Magen David Adom spokesman Zaki Heller said on Wednesday that when paramedics arrived at Eliyahu Berlin Street in Ramat Aviv, they found the kids lying on the pavement, and it was clear that they had fallen from a significant height.
Heller said by the time paramedics began treating them, they already were showing no signs of life, and after attempting to perform CPR they had to pronounce them both dead.
Wednesday’s tragedy took place only two days after a single mother from Ukraine allegedly stabbed to death her two children, aged seven and five, in their Jerusalem home, before trying to take her own life.
Also, in early September, a man from Daburiya near Nazareth went on a shooting rampage in the village, killing his ex-wife, two of his daughters, and a local man before taking his own life with a gunshot wound to the head.