Pregnant woman murdered in Ashdod

Woman stabbed over spilled coffee; doctors try to save baby.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
pregnant woman 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [illustrative])
pregnant woman 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [illustrative])
A pregnant woman was stabbed to death by her neighbor in Ashdod on Sunday following an argument over spilled coffee.
Tali Atar, 34, a mother of three, was repeatedly stabbed in the torso and neck by a 38- year-old mother of two who lived one floor below, police said.
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In her eighth month of pregnancy, Atar was rushed to the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot in critical condition, where doctors unsuccessfully battled to save her life – although they did save her unborn child with an emergency c-section procedure.
Doctors told Channel 2 they operated on the baby and were struggling to keep it alive.
Police arrested the neighbor after arriving at the building and say the suspect linked herself to the stabbing.
“We arrived at the address after being notified of an incident,” Supt. Meital Geref, spokeswoman of Lachish police, told The Jerusalem Post.
Several reports said the two women had been involved in a long-standing and escalating feud, and that Atar, who relatives said worked at a soup kitchen, was stabbed after being accused by her neighbor of deliberately spilling coffee out her third-floor window onto the suspect’s laundry line, which was full of clothing.
The two allegedly met up at the building’s entrance, where the suspect produced a knife and proceeded to stab Atar.
Paramedics described finding Atar lying in a pool of blood outside the building and said they immediately began attempts to save her life.
“We are at the start of the investigation. We cannot yet confirm that there was a previous feud,” Geref said, although she added that police had received a report that trash had been dumped outside the door of the murder victim the morning of the attack.
“We had no previous complaints of violent incidents,” the police spokeswoman said.