Tel Aviv car bombing victim was state’s witness
Avner Mayo killed in second slaying within a week connected to state witnesses in organized crime trials
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A man killed in a criminal underworld car-bombing in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning was identified as Avner Mayo, a figure known to police who had reportedly run afoul of two major organized crime families by turning state witness.
It was the second killing of people connected to the state witness program within a week.
Mayo’s car, a white Hummer, went up in flames on the corner of Devora HaNeviah and Moshe Sneh streets in the Ramot Tzahala neighborhood of Tel Aviv Sunday morning.
A police sapper who happened to be nearby pulled Mayo out of the flaming wreckage, but he died of his injuries after being rushed to a hospital.
Mayo, in his 40s, was set to testify as a state witness in a 2012 double-murder trial involving members of the Alperon crime family. Last year he was involved in bringing charges against leaders of the Musli crime organization which claimed he owed them money, Channel 2 reported.
Last week an Israeli woman, 30, was shot dead in front of her three young children on Beersheba’s Jerusalem Boulevard in a criminal underworld slaying.
Police said the victim was the wife of an imprisoned member of a criminal organization who testified against the organization. In October, an indictment was filed against the husband for sending threatening messages to his wife.
Police say they are exploring the possibility that the killing was an act of revenge against the husband, as well as the possibility that the husband ordered the shooting.
There have been several underworld car bombings in Tel Aviv and surrounding cities in the last several years raising fears among an Israeli populace already on edge due to a spate of terror attacks.
In January, three people were injured, two of them seriously, when a car exploded and burst into flames in a Tel Aviv suburb in a suspected underworld hit attempt. The injured included Ben Cohen, a senior figure in the crime organization headed by Amir Mulner, as well as his personal security guard. Two passersby were also lightly hurt in the blast, which rocked roads near the adjacent Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
During 2015 police made a series of arrests involving dozens of members of crime organizations across the country in what was described as one of the biggest crackdowns on organized crime in Israeli history.
The Times of Israel Community.