Sgt. Maj. Alon Barad, 38: Police officer and family man who studied law

Sgt. Maj. Alon Barad, 38, a police investigator at the Rahat station, from Beersheba, was killed on October 7 while battling the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival.

Alon was on duty as a police officer helping to secure the festival, arriving at the grounds on Friday evening. His shift was slated to end at 6:30 a.m., but when the attack began he stayed at the site of the rave helping people to evacuate, and later battling against the Hamas gunmen.

At 7:45 a.m. he texted his wife that there was chaos and a terror attack, adding, “I’m fine.” That was the last she heard from him. In footage from that morning, he can be seen engaging in a firefight with Hamas gunmen while trying to protect wounded partygoers.

He was buried in Beersheba on October 9. He is survived by his wife, Orli, their three children, Ariel, 6, Ron, 3, and Ella, 1, his parents, Sara and Yaakov and his two sisters, Natali and Dikla.

Born and raised in Beersheba, Alon attended local schools, according to a state obituary. After finishing high school, he enlisted in the IDF, serving as a helicopter technician in the Air Force.

Following his release, he returned to Beersheba and began working until he decided to join the police force in January 2012. He held a number of different positions, the final one being as an investigator posted in the Rahat police station.

Alon and Orli met in 2014 and wed in 2015, raising their three children in Beersheba. Loved ones described him as a doting father whose favorite pastime was spending time with his family, especially their daily routine of having a dance party before bathtime.

During his police service, he also completed a bachelor’s degree in law at the Ono Academic College. Alon was a sworn fan of the Hapoel Beersheba soccer team, attending as many games as he could.

His brother-in-law, Ofir, wrote on Facebook that Alon was “a perfect dad, a golden boy who nobody could say a bad word about. A smiling guy who always put his family first.”

Orli told Channel 12 news that her husband “loved his job so much, he felt like he was doing something of so much importance, that he was helping people.”

She noted that he had recently finished his law degree, “and he was supposed to start his stage [internship] soon — now he’ll never get to do it.”

Alon, she said, was a devoted dad, “he was around [the kids] all the time, they were so important to him, he always wanted to be with them as much as possible, that we’d have as many experiences together as we could. He was always calm, he always instilled a sense of security, that everything would be OK, no matter the situation that we went through together. He was always my anchor, the kids’ anchor, he was an incredible father.”

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