Police investigate after man found unconscious in the street with a bloodstained knife; woman, apparently his mother, discovered with fatal stab wounds
Police at the scene of a suspected murder-suicide in Bat Yam, December 21, 2025. (Israel Police)
Police on Sunday said they were investigating a suspected murder-suicide in the central city of Bat Yam after a man was found unconscious in the street, with a bloodstained knife in his possession.
The man was taken to Wolfson Medical Center in critical condition, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Police officers were dispatched to the man’s apartment, where, after breaking the door down, they found a woman in her 70s with fatal stab wounds. She was pronounced dead by medics at the scene.
An investigation has been opened into the suspected murder-suicide.
Unconfirmed reports suggested that those involved in the incident were a mother and son.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Editionby email and never miss our top stories
Similar incidents of suspected or confirmed murder-suicides have occurred across Israel in recent months.
In September, a man shot and killed his pregnant ex-wife and then critically wounded himself in an apparent suicide attempt in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.
Police inspect the scene of a murder and attempted suicide in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem, on August 11, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In April, a 13-year-old boy found both of his parents lifeless in their Jerusalem home, in suspected murder-suicide in which the husband shot his wife with a gun he had a permit for.
Advertisement
Then in June, a 51-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in an apartment in Bat Yam, leading to an hours-long standoff between police and her partner on the roof of the building before he jumped to his death. The partner was suspected of having killed the woman.
Some two weeks later, a man suspected of murdering his elderly mother jumped to his death from a roof in Rehovot.
We can't do this work alone.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this,please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
