Police grasp for motive after man kills his sons and wife

A day on, police on Sunday had yet to assign a motive in a grisly quadruple murder that saw a man apparently stab his wife, two young children and neighbor to death.

Dor Crasanti-Sela was killed alongside her sons Yosef, aged 2, and one-year-old Binyamin on Saturday afternoon in the northern town of Migdal outside of Tiberias. Nachman Atia, 11, was also killed, while his brother Natan, 10, was injured but survived, saying he played dead and escaped out of a window.

Police say an investigation is ongoing and have reportedly yet to determine a motive for the shocking killing spree. The man, arrested in a nearby forest on Saturday, confessed to the killings, police said.

His name is being kept under gag order.

At a court hearing the father asked that “God forgive me,” as a judge ordered him kept in custody for at least 12 days, according to the Ynet news site. He was also sent for a psychological examination.

Like the other victims, Natan Atia, the sole survivor of the spree, was stabbed multiple times, but told police the killer stopped stabbing him after he pretended to be dead.

He then jumped out of a bedroom window of the Sela’s ground-floor apartment and ran to get help.

Paramedics found Natan unconscious several hundred meters from the apartment with stab wounds to the face, neck and hands.

The head of trauma at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Dr. Hani Bachus, said Natan was undergoing surgery, but was not in life-threatening danger.

The violent murders shocked the small Galilee community, and most local residents expressed disbelief over the identity of the victims and perpetrator.

“There was no prior indication that something this unbelievable could happen,” one neighbor told Channel 10 news.

According to reports, the young couple recently became religiously observant and moved to Migdal, a town of about 2,000 people, with their young children.

“She was a good soul,” another neighbor told the TV station. “I can’t believe he would do something so horrible. They had such sweet, beautiful and innocent children.”

Another local resident told Channel 10 that he sat next to the father in the Migdal synagogue earlier that day.

“I would have never guessed that he would be capable of committing such a horrific crime,” he said. “Our entire community needs to do some soul-searching to see if there is something we missed that could have prevented this massacre.”

The deputy head of the Migdal Regional Council also echoed the disbelief of local residents, telling Army Radio there was no apparent warning for the murders.

“This wasn’t an at-risk family,” Yossi Gino said. “Like all the other Migdal residents, I am shocked by the murder, our entire community is grieving this shocking incident.”

The deaths of the Sela brothers brings the total of Israeli children killed by their parents to seven since the start of 2017.

Earlier this month, a mother in Jerusalem murdered her four children before killing herself. Days later, a mother and son were found dead in the northern city of Acre in what police believe was also a murder-suicide.