Teen boy struck and killed by car in Kiryat Malachi amid rash of road deaths
Victim, 15, had been manning phylacteries stand at entrance to southern town; death comes hours after three killed in crash near Kiryat Gat
A 15-year-old boy riding an electric scooter was killed after being run over by a car at the entrance to the southern town of Kiryat Malachi, in the latest deadly incident on Israel’s roads this week.
Magen David Adom medics dispatched to the scene found the boy lying unconscious with a cracked skull on David Ben Gurion Street and immediately began performing resuscitation efforts but were forced to declare his death shortly thereafter.
The driver who struck the boy was detained for questioning and an investigation was opened, police said.
The town’s mayor Eliyahu Zohar didn’t name the victim but said he was a member of Kiryat Malachi’s Chabad community and had been manning a phylactery stand that morning, encouraging male passersby to stop and pray.
The death was the latest in a string of crashes that has claimed the lives of seven Israelis over the past 48 hours, many of them youths.
On Thursday evening, three people were killed in a car collision along Route 6 near the southern city of Kiryat Gat. The victims were later identified as Anat Tal-Katelev and Nitzan Moshe, who were coworkers at a chemical company, and Ali Alatrash, who had been driving the other vehicle and did not have a registered license.
Tal-Katelev was buried Friday at the local cemetery in the southern town of Beit Kama. She was eulogized as someone devoted to community service, volunteering as a medical clown at hospitals and clinics in order to help cheer up children being treated for serious and terminal illnesses.
“You will be missed by thousands of children you accompanied in the hospitals,” said Eli Kelerman, who heads the Simcha Layeled volunteer medical clown organization of which Tal-Katelev was a member.
Earlier Thursday, two Israeli youth counselors, Yuval Keshet, 24, and Moshe Matan Luzon, 25, were killed and five injured in a collision in Egypt’s Sinai desert.
On Wednesday evening, 6-year-old Israeli boy Matan Tsinman was killed and six were wounded in a crash along Route 60 near the West Bank city of Ariel. Tsinman’s mother, who was injured in the crash, claimed that the Palestinian driver of the other vehicle, who was also hurt, had deliberately rammed her for nationalistic reasons, sparking protests by settlers Thursday.
As of Wednesday, 192 people have been killed on Israel’s roads since the start of the year, according to the National Road Safety Authority. Last year, 361 people died in traffic incidents, according to the authority.
