‘I thought it was a doll’: Handyman finds decaying body inside Haifa apartment wall
Decomposing remains wrapped in plastic are discovered by construction worker after landlord spotted suspicious concrete bulge; body sent for forensic analysis
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A decomposing body was discovered Wednesday in the wall of an apartment undergoing renovations in the northern city of Haifa.
Police launched an investigation into the incident after officers were called to the scene in Haifa’s Hadar neighborhood and said they were not ruling out any potential motives.
The body was sent to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for examination.
It was not clear how long the body had been in the wall, but the advanced state of decomposition indicated it had been there for some time.
A year and a half ago, a tenant of the apartment went missing, and the police suspect that the body may be his, Channel 12 news reported.
According to the Ynet news site, the body was discovered after the separate death five days ago of a previous tenant, likely from drug abuse, which prompted the landlord to come to the apartment. There, he found a concrete bulge on the wall above the tenant’s bed, so he called a handyman to remove the bulge.
“I didn’t know there was a body there. I asked myself, ‘Who would put concrete like this on a home floor?'” Ahmad Dhawafta, the handyman, told reporters. “When the plastic bag was found, my hairs stood on end because I was so scared.”
“I didn’t see the bones because everything was covered with concrete, only the head was uncovered. I opened it, and at first I thought it was a doll. I didn’t know if it was the head of a person or a doll, a man or a woman, I didn’t see anything,” Dhawafta added.
“People who live here are of the lowest kind, even drug addicts,” a neighbor of the apartment told Ynet about the old residential building. “There are a ton of drug addicts and sketchy characters here.”
The Times of Israel Community.