Parents of murdered girl awarded NIS 1.45m. in compensation

Family sued school, Education Ministry and municipality after repairman stabbed Tair Rada to death.

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK
Justice gavel court law book judge 311 (photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
Justice gavel court law book judge 311
(photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
The Haifa District Court accepted on Wednesday a NIS 1.45 million compensation settlement between state authorities and parents of murdered teenager, Tair Rada.
Court President Judge Bilha Gillor ruled to give the agreement the validity of a court verdict, and removed a gag order preventing details of the deal from being published.
In a brutal, and apparently motiveless, slaying that shocked the country, Rada, 13, was stabbed to death in 2006 in a bathroom stall in the Nofey Golan High School where she studied in Katzrin.
In 2010, four years after the slaying, 32-year-old Roman Zadorov, a repair contractor at the Nofey Golan school, was found guilty of Rada’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The settlement comes after Rada’s parents, Ilana and Shmuel, filed a civil lawsuit in 2008 against Zadarov, the Education Ministry and local authorities. Rada’s parents argued that their daughter’s murder occurred as a result of negligence, after the school and local authorities hired contract workers, including Zadarov, without carrying out any prior checks on them.
Those workers were then permitted to come into close contact with schoolchildren.
Under the terms of the settlement, the Katzrin Municipal Council, the Golan Regional Council and the Nofey Golan High School will each pay Rada’s family NIS 210,000, and the Education Ministry will pay NIS 225,000. The balance of the compensation settlement will be paid by the insurance companies of the high school and the Karev Fund, an educational charity that sponsored after-school classes at Rada’s school.
Notably, both parties agreed as part of the settlement that Zadarov will not pay compensation.
“Despite their revulsion at his shocking actions, the parties accepted the mediator’s recommendation to drop their claim against [Zadarov] with no order for costs,” Gillor said in her ruling.
According to the indictment, on the day of Rada’s murder, Zadorov left the school cellar where he was laying a new floor and came across Rada on a stairwell leading to a bathroom.
Zadarov followed Rada into the bathroom and as she tried to close the stall door, he pushed it open and slit her throat. He then slashed her chest and arms before locking the bathroom from the inside and climbing out over Rada’s body.
He then climbed out of a window to flee the scene.