Man, woman found shot to death in Rishon Lezion home
Police suspect killer ex-boyfriend of woman, launch manhunt
A man and woman were found shot to death in an apartment in the central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion Wednesday afternoon, in what police suspected was a double murder.
The woman, 29-year-old Anastasia Rusanov, a mother of two, was found with gunshot wounds all over her body while the man, 34-year-old Eliezer Kandinov, was found shot in the head.
Police suspected that the killer may have been a former boyfriend of Rusanov and launched a manhunt. According to the Walla news site, in the past she had complained that he had been violent, and he continued to harass her after their breakup a few months earlier.
According to Channel 2 news, Rusanov went to police three months ago to complain that her ex-boyfriend had threatened her.
הנרצחים ברצח הכפול בראשל"צ: אנסטסיה רוסנוב ואליעזר קנדינובhttps://t.co/zVR1CH54bh pic.twitter.com/1bpbsCstAu
— מעריב אונליין (@MaarivOnline) May 25, 2016
The victims, who were apparently dating, were found in Rusanov’s apartment on Pika Street in Rishon Lezion, a city of some 200,000 south of Tel Aviv.
Kandinov was the owner of a cleaning company and a father of three.
Initially reports indicated the killing may have been a murder-suicide, but suspicions moved away from that theory when no murder weapon was found at the scene.
“It is a very complex scene and it is unclear at the moment what happened in the apartment. We are not ruling out any possibilities about the incident in which the two were killed,” police said.
A neighbor said gunshots were heard before the two were discovered.
“I was in the kitchen and I heard a large number of shots. Immediately I went to the balcony and after a minute or two the police arrived,” the neighbor told Walla.
The two were found in the apartment by Rusanov’s mother.
Yael Gold, head of the No 2 Violence organization which fights violence against women, called on authorities to take action against domestic killings such as this one.
“These women are not just another case in another line in the newspaper. These women are mothers, sisters, daughters — they have a family and the damage is like a ripple effect for all of us,” she said in a statement. “This phenomenon can be stopped with our own hands. And until we do that we have not done enough and our hands are stained with blood.”
