Teen seriously injured in Jerusalem bombing released from hosptial
Elhanan Biton suffered multiple injuries in blast at bus stop near entrance to capital; he was sitting on a bench next to his friend Aryeh Schupak, who was killed in the attack
A teenager who was seriously injured in last week’s double-bombing in Jerusalem walked out of the hospital on Sunday with doctors saying he had made a good recovery.
Elhanan Biton was a close friend of Aryeh Schupak, who was killed in the blast at a bus stop at the Givat Shaul entrance to the capital. The two 16-year-olds were sitting together on a bench when the bomb went off.
“I tried to move him to the side, but I immediately understood that he’d apparently died on the spot,” Biton said of the moments after the explosion. Schupak, a yeshiva student from Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood and a dual Israeli-Canadian national, was declared dead soon after the explosion. Biton suffered multiple shrapnel wounds to his body, including to his head.
At a sending-off ceremony with doctors and staff as he left Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Biton recalled Schupak as “a guy who loved to help and loved to study, loved everyone.”
The Biton family thanked “the dedicated doctors and nurses for the sacred work they do.”
Hospital staff said they were happy with Biton’s “good recovery from his wounds and wish him much success on his journey and a complete recovery.”
In the hours after the attacks, Biton’s father told media that his son had seen a man photographing people at the bus stop shortly before the explosion.
Two bombs went off at separate bus stops in Jerusalem last Wednesday. The first device ,at Givat Shaul, that killed Schupak, also critically injured Tadese Tashume, a father of six, who succumbed to his wounds Saturday. Tashume, an immigrant from Ethiopia, was buried Sunday. A funeral for Schupak was held last week.
The second bomb, which went off half an hour later, near the Ramot neighborhood, did not cause serious injuries.
Also Sunday, Shaare Zedek said a Book of Psalms in a man’s pocket had blocked some bomb shrapnel from hitting him when he was caught in the first explosion.
The man, 62, was seriously injured, but one fragment was stopped by the pages of the book.
The shard of metal stopped in Psalm 124 at the words “Our soul like a bird escaped from a box of harshness… and we escaped,” the hospital said in a statement.
No group has claimed the attacks and a manhunt is underway to catch the perpetrators.
