Teenage terrorist files complaint against cop who shot her

A Palestinian teenager who was shot while carrying out an attempted terror attack in Jerusalem this week has formally complained to police about the off-duty sapper who fired at her.

The girl filed her complaint with the Police Investigative Department, which said it will examine the case, Channel 10 reported Thursday.

The 16-year-old girl was caught on camera on Jaffa Road — in the area near the Mahane Yehuda open-air vegetable market — on Monday morning with her 14-year-old cousin as they lashed out at people with scissors.

The two managed to lightly wound an elderly Palestinian man from Bethlehem — whom they mistook for a Jew — before they were shot by the policeman. A 27-year-old passerby was also wounded when he was hit by an errant bullet.

The sapper had been in the area and was at the scene virtually at once, and in less than a minute had disarmed both girls. He fired one bullet at the 16-year-old, wounding her, and then shot and killed the 14-year-old.

Seeing the older girl still moving out of the corner of his eye, the cop fired again, apparently to ascertain that she was no longer able to harm anyone.

But in her interrogation, the girl told a different version of the incident, painting herself as a victim.

“She [the 14-year-old] asked me to go with her to Jaffa Road,” the teenager told Israeli investigators. “I never intended to hurt anyone. Suddenly she pulled out the scissors and scratched someone. I didn’t understand what she was doing.

“People started yelling ‘Terrorist!’ and I was afraid they would attack me, so I whipped out the scissors to protect myself,” she recalled. “Suddenly I was shot and a man hit me with a chair and I was knocked out.”

Police officials defended the sapper’s decision to shoot the girl more than once, saying that given the speed with which the incident unfolded and an element of surprise that rendered judgment difficult, the sapper had acted “according to regulations.”

The sapper “was not sure the terrorist was sufficiently wounded” to be unable to harm anyone, police said, citing other instances in which terrorists continued to attack even when hurt. On October 13, a terrorist slammed his car into a bus stop in Jerusalem, but despite being dazed by the collision that totaled his vehicle, he got up and tried to stab passersby before he was shot by a security guard.