Suspect in fire killing of nurse reenacts incident
Holocaust survivor Asher Faraj, 78, says he didn’t mean to harm Tova Kararo, only to damage property to protest being ignored
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The elderly man suspected of setting a nurse on fire and killing her returned in chains on Tuesday to the medical clinic where the incident took place to reenact the events for police.
Tova Kararo, 55, was pronounced dead on site at the Clalit HMO clinic in the city of Holon just south of Tel Aviv after the fire spread too rapidly for bystanders to help.
During questioning by police, the suspect, Asher Faraj, a 78-year-old Holocaust survivor, reportedly said he had not intended to harm anyone, only to cause damage to property at the clinic.
He said he had been given a flu injection several days ago, which had made him feel ill. He thought he might have been poisoned, Channel 2 news reported.
He returned to the clinic every day feeling unwell, but nobody helped so he threw the bottle of inflammable material into what he thought was an empty room.
“The elderly man who suffers from mental problems claims that he had no intention of harming any of the medical staff and that he hadn’t poured inflammable material onto the nurse,” said Ofir Katabi, the public defender representing the suspect.
“He says he wanted to damage property in order to shout out about the suffering caused to him and to get help from the authorities,” Katabi said.
Six months ago, the suspect’s behavior prompted his family doctor to send him for psychiatric testing, Channel 2 said. But psychiatrists concluded that he was not psychotic and not dangerous.
Police believe, however, that he is mentally disturbed and plan to send him for psychiatric evaluation when they request an extension of his remand on Wednesday.
They said that in the hours immediately following the tragedy, the man was unable to explain what he had done.
Family members eulogized Kararo as “the angel of the family.” In a letter, they said, “We lost a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a friend, a loving wife.”
“She always loved everyone and looked after everyone.”
As a nurse, she had treated thousands of sick people over more than 30 years, they said. “We are all in pain over her untimely death.”
Kararo leaves behind a husband, two daughters and a grandchild.
Health service and social workers announced that they would strike for two hours on Wednesday to protest violence against health personnel.
According to official government figures, there were 3,000 reported cases of violence or abuse against health personnel in hospitals, clinics and emergency services between 2014 and 2016. Approximately 75 percent of those attacks were verbal abuse.
A quarter of the attacks were physical attacks against medical staff or their security. Three-quarters of the attacks took place in hospitals, especially in emergency rooms.
In almost one-quarter of the cases the victims filed complaints with the police.
