Police redesignate teen’s 2022 road death as suspected murder, arrest 5

Police announced on Monday that they had arrested five suspects on suspicion of murder, in relation to a vehicular death in Tel Aviv last year that had until now been considered an accident.

Tel Aviv Police said that five suspects, all residents of Tel Aviv aged 16-19, were arrested in connection to the death of 15-year-old Shalev Aflalo on September 24, 2022.

Aflalo was walking on Menahem Arber Street in south Tel Aviv on that date, when he was hit by a car and seriously wounded. He was later declared dead in a hospital.

Police now believe that Aflalo’s death was not an accident, and that he was familiar with the driver of the car that killed him, as well as others involved in the incident.

Family members of Aflalo have claimed that someone had called Aflalo and told him to come to Arber Street to talk, and that a person had shoved the teenager in front of the car that hit and killed him.

Talia Aflalo, Shalev’s twin sister, told the Walla news site that “from the start, I knew that they had shoved him into the street intentionally.”

According to Kan news, Aflalo and the other teenagers had been involved in some sort of dispute related to a romantic entanglement.

One 19-year-old suspect was brought to court on Monday and remanded in custody until Thursday. The remaining four suspects are slated to appear in court on Tuesday for a remand hearing.

A police representative told the court on Monday that there “are quite a few people involved, both suspects and witnesses,” according to Walla. “This was an unnecessary death of a minor under the guise of a car accident, and we are confident that this was a planned incident.”