Family of truck driver to attend victims’ funerals

The family of the driver of an out-of-control truck that killed six people north of Haifa on Wednesday afternoon plans to attend the funerals of the victims, relatives announced Thursday.

His family said that he had been a truck driver for only two years and recently asked to leave his job, Israel Radio reported.

Haifa traffic police said Thursday that the driver, who was hospitalized due to injuries sustained in the crash, would be remanded for another week in order to determine if criminal negligence was a factor in the accident, which also injured 15 people, three of them critically.

On Wednesday afternoon, the speeding truck ran a traffic light between Haifa and Nesher and struck cars at and near the light. After the first impact, the truck traveled an additional 200 meters, hitting cars and passersby before coming to a stop. 

Police on Wednesday said that the driver, who has 16 prior violations including some for driving a faulty vehicle, was driving an overburdened vehicle that should not have been on the road.

The truck truck’s weight exceeded the permitted 32 metric tons by about 25 percent, turning the vehicle into a “deadly weapon,” police said. The truck was taken off the road due to a violation only days prior to the crash, they added.

Authorities said that as the truck plowed through cars, the driver yelled that he had no brakes.

Although police initially considered the possibility that the 30-year-old driver, a resident of the southern Bedouin town of Rahat, had carried out a deliberate attack, later that hypothesis was all but ruled out.

“At this moment in time we don’t believe it was a terror attack,” Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Times of Israel on Wednesday. “We strongly believe it was an accident, based on findings at the scene and eyewitnesses.”

Recent years have seen multiple incidents during which Palestinians targeted Israelis with heavy vehicles, most famously in a series of backhoe attacks in Jerusalem in 2008.

The driver, who was lightly hurt, was under police guard at a Haifa hospital Wednesday night for fear that a member of one of the victims’ families would may try to attack him.

Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav called the scene “horrific” and said that the truck had hit a traffic light and caused it to fall on nearby cars, “increasing the casualties and the damage.”