Checkpoint guards shoot, injure deaf man who entered restricted area
60-year-old Palestinian man walked into zone reserved for cars, raising suspicions of civilian security officers, who fired at his legs after he failed to respond to calls
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJudah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
Civilian security guards at the Qalandiya checkpoint shot a deaf Palestinian man in the leg on Monday morning after he entered a restricted area and didn’t hear them calling for him to leave, police said.
The man, who is in his 60s, walked on foot into an area that is designated only for cars at the Jerusalem-area crossing, one of the West Bank’s busiest checkpoints. There have been many attempted attacks in the area as the security guards operate in the open.
“The guards called for the man several times to stop, and when he didn’t, they went through the ‘suspect arrest protocol’ in which they opened fire at him, lightly-to-moderately injuring him in the lower part of his body,” police said.
After the fact, Border Police determined that the man did not heed the guards’ commands because he has hearing and speech problems, a police spokesperson said.
The Palestinian man was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment, a hospital spokesperson said.
Police did not immediately confirm that an investigation had been opened into the incident.
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