Israeli man shoots, kills 9-year-old son, self in New Hampshire

Murder-suicide occurs during visitation at YWCA.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
New Hampshire police 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
New Hampshire police 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
An Israeli man living in New Hampshire shot and killed his nine-year-old son before taking his own life in the city of Manchester on Sunday, The New Hampshire Union Leader reported.
Muni Savyon, 54, a software consultant and member of Chabad in Manchester, New Hampshire, shot his son and himself while visiting the boy, Joshua, at the YWCA in Manchester. The office in which the tragedy occurred was used for supervised visitation between parents and children, The Union Leader reported.
Savyon fired several shots at his son before turning the handgun on himself. Authorities said that a counselor who had also been present escaped the room unharmed.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery A. Strelzin said that Savyon had been separated from the boy's mother for several years. "The relationship has been contentious at times and included threats by Muni Savyon to kill himself, his son's mother and their son," the Union Leader quoted him as saying.
The paper quoted Rabbi Levi Krinsky, who knew Savyon for many years in Manchester, as saying the man's demeanor had changed following his return from a trip to Israel, where he went to sit shiva for his brother who died of a heart attack.
"I saw him when he returned from Israel; he was clearly distraught, spacey," the Union Leader quoted Krinsky as saying. "It never occurred to me that he was distressed to the point of suicide."
Krinsky said that many members of Savyon's family live in Israel.
According to the Union Leader, Savyon ran as a Republican in a February 2012 election for New Hampshire state House of Representatives for Hillsborough District 10, a section of Manchester's Ward 3.