Police investigate second hotel room ‘double suicide’ in week

Police are investigating the cause of death in a second attempted “double suicide” in a hotel room this week, after a couple in their 60s were found unconscious Tuesday morning. The woman was declared dead, while the man was and taken to the hospital in serious condition for critical surgery.

Emergency services were called to the Renaissance Hotel in Tel Aviv after staff discovered the couple lying on the bed next to an apparent suicide note.

Magen David Adom paramedics declared the 60-year-old woman dead at the scene and took the man, 65, to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital. A spokesman for the hospital said he was in serious but stable condition and was undergoing surgery.

Police said in a statement that “the circumstances of the incident have not yet been clarified” and confirmed they had opened an investigation.

A police spokesperson said that while the investigation was currently not being treated as a murder, “nothing is being ruled out at the moment.”

The incident comes just three days after a couple in their twenties were found dead under similar circumstances in a hotel room in Eilat. Staff in the southern city’s Herod’s Hotel on Sunday found the bodies of Baruch Indig and Odelia Bachar lying on the bed in their room alongside a suicide note in their names.

On Tuesday, the High Court delayed a police autopsy of Indig and Bachar, accepting the petition of their ultra-Orthodox families against the move and giving police just 24 hours to prove they have a living suspect in their deaths.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Times of Israel that the Eilat and Tel Aviv cases were being treated as separate, isolated incidents and there was nothing that pointed to a connection. “That being said,” he added, “we have seen past cases of copycat incidents and that may well be a factor here.”