Man suspected of murdering mother jumps to his death from roof after police standoff

A man suspected of murdering his elderly mother died after jumping from a roof in Rehovot Thursday morning, ending an hours-long standoff with police.

The apparent murder-suicide bore a striking resemblance to an incident earlier this month in which a man jumped to his death from a Bat Yam roof after killing his partner.

Police and paramedics said they found an 80-year-old woman dead in her apartment in the city Thursday morning.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, the son called first responders to the scene before ascending to the roof.

Police initially believed the elderly victim had died of natural causes, but then noticed a bullet wound in her head, leading them to suspect she was murdered, the outlet said.

The woman’s son barricaded himself on the roof as a police negotiating team tried to talk him down. After a standoff of over three hours, the man jumped.

Medics took him in critical condition to the city’s Kaplan Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead by hospital staff.

Paramedics arrive to the scene of a suspected murder in Rehovot, as a man thought to have killed his mother barricades himself on the roof of a building on June 12, 2025. (Magen David Adom)

The elderly victim is the 18th woman to be murdered by a family member since the start of this year, according to numbers from the Michal Sela Forum, a domestic violence watchdog.

In all of 2024, a total of 17 women were murdered by their relatives.

A strikingly similar murder-suicide took place earlier this June in Bat Yam, in which 51-year-old Yelena Galovsky was found stabbed to death in her apartment, with her recently estranged partner the prime suspect.

Yevgeny Galovsky, the suspected partner, climbed to the roof of the building and barricaded himself there for nine hours, refusing to come down despite the urging of police negotiators on the scene.

He eventually jumped from the roof to his death.