Two murder-suicides in one day in the North

Additional murder in Ashdod, both murder-suicides had history of domestic violence

By JPOST.COM STAFF
crime scene (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [illustrative])
crime scene
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [illustrative])
Four people were killed in two separate domestic murder-suicide episodes in the North on Sunday. In Kiryat Ata, a 45-year-old man stabbed his wife to death and then hung himself. In Masad in the Lower Galilee, a 58-year-old man shot his wife to death and then shot himself, police reported.
Police arrived at the house of a couple in the Bayit V’Gan neighborhood of Kiryat Ata Sunday morning to discover the body of a man hanging in the front yard. When they entered the house, they found his wife’s body inside with signs of severe violence. Police said the woman had been stabbed to death.
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The wife had reportedly filed two domestic violence complaints against her husband, and in May of 2010 he was detained for questioning on suspicion of assault. The man denied the accusations and the case was closed for lack of evidence.
Neighbors said that the situation at the couple’s home deteriorated after the woman asked for a divorce, and that the husband sometimes locked his wife and children inside the house. Police have not released the names of the woman or her husband.
“The writing was on the wall,” neighbor Galya Prahi told the Hebrew media. “We always heard yells coming from the house. There were loud arguments, and one of the neighbors even complained to the police,” she said.
The couple had three children, ages 16, 8, and 7. All of the children were in school during the incident. The woman was a teacher at her children’s school, neighbors said. The children are being looked after by the local social services department and their grandmother.
On Sunday evening in Masad, a small village west of Tiberias in the lower Galilee, there was a second murder-suicide of a couple in their 60s. Police discovered the bodies after responding to a call that shots were heard in the house. 
According to Galilee police spokesman Eran Shaked, the man was arrested in 2008 for attacking his wife and served a number of months in prison. Afterward completing his prison term, he was released on the condition that he wear an electronic anklet to ensure that he stayed away from Masad, after which he went to live with his sister in Modi’in.
At the end of 2010, the man completed the two-year period during which he was required to wear the electronic anklet, and went back to live near Masad. Shaked told The Jerusalem Post the man was in constant contact with a social worker, as prescribed by the courts, and he had made no attempts to get in touch with his wife or try to approach his old house. No complaints had been filed against him in the three months since he had moved back to the North.
On Sunday, the man walked into the house and shot his former wife. The couple’s youngest child, a 17-year-old son, was home at the time and fled the scene. The couple has three other children who are older and did not live at home.
In a separate incident also on Sunday, a 45-year-old man who appeared to be homeless was discovered with deep stab wounds all over his body in a city park in Ashdod. Pedestrians passing through the city park on Yoseftal Street alerted emergency services when they saw the man lying on the ground around 2:20 in the afternoon.
Magen David Adom tried to perform lifesaving measures, but the man died on the way to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot.
Police are still trying to determine the man’s identity, though they quickly located two suspects and took them for questioning.