After fleeing country, crime boss charged for beating hospital guards

The head of a known crime ring from the central Israel city of Rishon Lezion was charged Tuesday for his role in a “severe” assault on security guards at a Tel Aviv hospital in September.

David Amoyal was arrested Thursday upon his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport from Thailand, to which he had fled immediately after the incident, police said in a statement.

According to the State Prosecution, Amoyal was a central figure in the assault on guards at Ichilov Hospital, where his girlfriend, Elia Kadosh, was a patient.

Kadosh and four men were charged in October, 10 days after security cameras captured the entire incident.

Like Amoyal, Ruslan Misayev (28), Mor Biton (21), Hanan Alfasi (49) and Avraham Yosephov (28) were charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, causing serious injury as a group and group assault causing bodily harm. Kadosh, 19, was charged with threatening behavior and assaulting a police officer.

Police put out a search warrant for Amoyal, who they said had fled the country. The 35-year old is known to law enforcement authorities, which have pursued his associates for a series of crimes in the central Israel region, according to Hebrew media reports.

The charge sheet presented by the prosecution Tuesday describes how Kadosh came to the hospital’s emergency center on September 28, accompanied by Misayev, a friend of Amoyal. At some point, Kadosh began to swear and scream at the medical team, complaining that she was not receiving adequate treatment.

One of the security guards noticed her trying to grab the telephone from the head nurse and tried to move her away from the counter, according to the charge sheet.

She allegedly threatened the medical team and the guards and said, “Wait and see what’ll happen to you when my husband arrives.”

Misayev then left and contacted Amoyal.

Arriving at the hospital with Biton, Alfasi and Yosephov, Amoyal spotted one of the guards at the entrance, and shouted to him, “I am your Satan, just wait, not in front of the cameras, I’ll catch you outside,” the prosecution said, quoting the video footage.

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The five then went into the emergency room and began attacking four guards, one of whom hit his head on the floor and had to be taken to the trauma unit.

The attackers then fled back to their car with three guards in pursuit. When one of the guards tried to stop Yosephov from getting into the car, Amoyal and the four other men pinned him to the wall and attacked him “without mercy,” beating him in the face, head and all over his body, according to the allegations.

One of the guards needed stitches to his head and had one tooth broken and another damaged, requiring lengthy dental treatment.

Another guard suffered cuts to his head and upper lip, the court heard, while the third sustained bruising and swelling in his head, nose and shoulder.

When police arrived, Kadosh allegedly tried to get away from the unit and when told to sit down, punched a policewoman in the face twice and spat at her.

When tackled to the floor, she allegedly scratched the policewoman’s face, spat at her and tried to bite her, swearing at her throughout.

התקיפה באיכילוב: זה מה שאמרה בחקירתה אליה קדוש בת ה-19, החשודה שדירבנה את חבריה להכות את אנשי הצוותhttps://t.co/ePAID8ogyT pic.twitter.com/enI1aF5mwX

— רשת (@Reshettv) October 3, 2017

Once handcuffed, she allegedly continued trying to spit and kick until police cuffed her feet as well.

Security camera footage of the attack showed the guards being surrounded and kicked and punched by the attackers. The hospital said that the medical and nursing staff were “stunned and frightened by the violence.”

Staff had held a demonstration outside the emergency room shortly before the assault to protest a recent spate of attacks on medical personnel in hospitals.

Following the attack, a group representing Israel’s emergency doctors demanded that the government immediately post a uniformed police officer in every ER department to protect staff against what it said was a wave of increasingly violent attacks on its personnel.

Sue Surkes contributed to this report.