Following manhunt, police arrest Jerusalem father who abducted his 3 children

A father briefly abducted his three young daughters from their school in Jerusalem and took them to Rishon Lezion, police said Thursday.

The mother of the children, aged 9, 11 and 12, had a restraining order against her former husband for what she described as violent incidents in the past and was the one who reported the abduction, the police added.

It was not immediately clear how the father was able to pick up the children from their school despite the restraining order. After a police manhunt, he was found several hours later at a park in Rishion Lezion and arrested, Channel 2 reported. The children were reported to be unharmed.

A similar incident last month in Tel Aviv ended in tragedy.

In September, in a murder-suicide that shocked the country, a father threw his two young children off the roof of an 11-floor building in north Tel Aviv, before jumping off himself. The incident occurred on the eve of Sukkot.

Eli Gur had forcibly taken the children from their mother’s house earlier in the day. She reported the kidnapping to the police, who began a city-wide search, but were unable to locate them in time.

The parents had been undergoing divorce proceedings, and a restraining order was filed against the father after the mother alerted the authorities that he had threatened to “break her bones” and kill her.