Beersheba police to pay murder victim’s family millions for neglecting calls
Law enforcement, municipality of southern city found liable for not responding to emergency calls at time of 2012 killing of Gadi Vichman, who was stabbed to death outside his home
Police and the municipality of the southern city of Beersheba will pay NIS 4.7 million ($1.4 million) to the family of a man murdered in 2012, because police failed to respond to calls about the crime for several hours, according to a Thursday report.
Gadi Vichman, 35, was stabbed to death by Eden Ohayon, then 18, in a park outside the Vichmans’ Beersheba home in May 2012.
Ohayon killed Vichman during a confrontation over late-night noise, and was sentenced to life in prison in March 2014.
Police received the first call about the altercation at 12:14 a.m. The call followed earlier complaints from Vichman’s family and neighbors about young men making noise beneath their apartment building.
“The hotline operator tells me, ‘We’re sending a mobile [police unit]. I’m sending it.’ I told her, ‘Quickly, so that nothing will happen,’” Vichman’s widow, Michal, said of the call, according to Channel 13.
“There was no mobile unit, and before that there were many others before me who called, and no one came then either. They could have prevented it, the murder. Gadi could have been with us here, today,” Michal Vichman said.
Police received three additional calls about the initial altercation, and did not respond to the scene.
Even after a police officer and municipal inspector received a call about the stabbing from one of the Vichman’s neighbors, they failed to respond to the scene, Channel 13 said.
They eventually arrived at the site of the crime around two and a half hours after the initial call.
A police investigation into the killing found that the police officer later lied about the incident; she was immediately fired from her job.
Vichman’s wife Michal said her husband confronted Ohayon and his friends for making too much noise late at night, disturbing their young daughter. He was stabbed with a knife and left to die.
However, Ohayon maintained that he had killed Vichman in self-defense after being headbutted.
The judges on the panel at Ohayon’s sentencing said that the fact that he was holding a knife showed that he intended to harm, while Vichman did not confront Ohayon in order to start a physical fight and even called the police before he went outside to confront Ohayon and his friends.
“The deceased went in the direction of the accused, but did not manage to make it very far,” Judge Revital Katz said. “It can be assumed that the knife was already in the accused’s hand and came out before the headbutt.”
At the time, the murder was seen as one of a string of deadly fights involving Israeli teens.
