Omri Lavi, 25: A ‘red-headed kid who was one of a kind’

Omri Yaakov Lavi, 25, from Safed, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.

Omri arrived at the festival on Friday evening, which he had been excitedly anticipating for weeks. After the start of the rocket fire, he told his parents that the police were clearing the site of the rave and he was on his way to the car to head out.

He and his best friend, Gil Avni, were shot dead next to their vehicle before they could leave the site of the festival. The car was found a few days later, but their bodies were not identified for another several days.

Omri was buried in Safed on October 13. He is survived by his parents, Hagit and Yitzhak, his siblings Barak and Noa and his girlfriend Inbar.

Born and raised in Safed, Omri, the middle child in his family, attended local schools in the city, focusing his high school studies on film, according to a state eulogy.

His loves ones said he loved to draw, including graffitiing on walls, played computer games and loved the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team. He studied martial arts, played basketball and enjoying skateboarding and snowboarding.

After finishing high school, he enlisted in the IDF in 2016, serving in the Golani Brigade, and completing a squad commander’s course. Following his release, Omri worked as a security guard in Safed and later moved in with friends in Ramat Gan and worked as a bartender.

In December 2022 he embarked on a grand tour around South America. Just a few months before he was killed, Omri returned to Israel, rented an apartment in Ramat Gan and started working at the Meitav investment house.

Marking a year since he was killed, his brother, Barak, wrote on Instagram that it was hard for him to contemplate the passage of time, “with an inexplicable feeling that every day in this world without you is like 10 years of suffering.”

“If you can’t come back, at least send me strength from there, because I promised you that I would accomplish everything for you, and there’s no chance I’m going to lose — you never lost and you’re a part of me, so we’ll never lose!” he wrote.

Barak said he would make sure “that everybody knows you, we’ll make sure to do so much good and spread so much light — your light. The biggest light in the world. Light that will shine on everyone!”

Omri’s mother, Hagit, told a local radio station that she wants to remember her son not how he died, “but how he was, a special kid, an angel.”

“His real life was just starting,” she said. “He had such a sense of humor, that the most depressed person would start laughing around him. There was nobody who spent time with him who wasn’t infected with his smile and the joy for life that Omri had.”

Hagit described him as a “red-headed kid who was one of a kind.”

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