Taxi driver suspected of kidnapping, abusing 7-year-old

A taxi driver from Jerusalem was arrested last week on suspicion of kidnapping a 7-year-old girl from Ashdod and sexually assaulting her in forest near Beit Shemesh, police said Wednesday.

The driver is also suspected of raping the girl, police said, after the arrest was cleared for publication Wednesday.

An initial investigation indicated that the young girl had been waiting for a bus in her hometown after leaving school when the taxi driver allegedly lured her into his vehicle, promising to drive her home and provide her with chocolate.

The driver, whose name remains under gag order, is then suspected of proceeding to drive the girl toward Beit Shemesh, before assaulting her in a forest. He later fled the scene and left the girl in the woods on her own, police said.

The girl was found on a highway near Beit Shemesh several hours later by a woman who was passing in the area. The woman, Mira Sorek, said the 7-year-old was visibly shaken and distraught.

“She told me that the the taxi driver held and stroked her like a baby,” Sorek said, according to Ynet.

Sorek said she then immediately contacted the girl’s parents.

The taxi driver, a 48-year-old, was planning on traveling to Vietnam on Saturday in order to get married, police said.

The driver’s attorney, however, claimed his client did not assault the girl, but had instead merely got lost while driving her home.

“This is a Kafkaesque story,” attorney Ariel Atari said, according to Ynet,

“My client was trying to help the child and because he was not familiar with the road, the girl was nervous and cried and he got nervous as a result as well, and thus left her at the entrance to a small town [near Beit Shemesh].”

Atari added that the girl gave conflicting versions of the incident during her investigation.

Police, meanwhile, extended the driver’s remand at the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court for five more days.