Police on defensive after dad kills 3-year-old son, commits suicide

Police sought to explain Tuesday why they had failed to track down a man who was on the run for a day after stabbing his wife and kidnapping their 3-year-old son.

On Monday evening, the man was found dead after he apparently jumped in front of a train in Beit Yehoshua, while his son’s body was found in a nearby car.

Appearing on morning news programs Tuesday, senior officers defended police’s handling of the case amid questions of why police were unable to track down the father before he murdered his son.

“These people weren’t known to the police. We had no way of expecting this case,” Chief Superintendent Roee Waldman, head of investigations for the Central District Police, told Keshet TV.

“The father stabbed his wife, took the kid and said he’s not coming back. From that moment we tried to locate the father and his son, [but] the cellphones were turned off,” added Waldman. “We searched the homes of family [and] friends. We conducted a manhunt but didn’t succeed in getting to him.”

He also defended police’s decision to not release a photo of the father, Ilan Gadesi.

“We weighed all the options and based on our experience in previous cases we reached the conclusion not to publish the photo,” he said. “If we had published the photo it would have pushed him over the edge even sooner.”

Chief Superintendent Ran Battat, an officer in the investigations wing of the Sharon District police, told Channel 10 that in addition to setting up roadblocks and searching with helicopters, “all the police’s technological means were used in order to track the suspect.”

“Unfortunately we didn’t succeed,” Battat said.

According to police, Gadesi, 49, from the central town of Raanana, got into an argument with his wife on Sunday morning, during which he stabbed and lightly wounded her, and then fled with their son, Evyatar.

“We immediately declared a manhunt. During the process, we used various means, including technological, to try and find the man,” a police spokesperson told reporters Sunday.

Police sources told Hadashot TV news that, after compiling a psychological profile of the father, it was decided not to issue a public alert about the abduction. However, a large police force was deployed in the searches.

“Later, we found the father on the railway lines and then we found the body of the child in the car,” the police said. “It is a very difficult incident and very tragic. We are continuing to investigate.”

Beit Yehoshua, in central Israel, is only a few kilometers from Raanana. Trains were stopped in both directions.

The wife was taken to Meir Hospital with light injuries, before the news that her child and husband had died. Relatives told Hadashot news that she was suffering great emotional stress due to concern over her son’s well-being.

Sources close to the family told Hadashot that the couple appeared completely normal, and had no criminal or psychiatric record. They spoke of their shock when they heard about the dispute between the couple that led to the stabbing.