Youth, 17, sentenced for killing brother

Teen defenestrated 11-year-old sibling's corpse from the eighth floor.

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
multipurpose crime 298 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski and AP [file])
multipurpose crime 298
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski and AP [file])
A 17-year-old Jerusalem teen who bludgeoned his 11-year-old brother to death with a weight during a fight over use of the family computer was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison by the Jerusalem District Court. The teen, who was 16 at the time of the July 12 attack, beat his brother in the head with a 10-kilogram weight after getting into a dispute with him over who would use the computer in their Jerusalem home. He then hurled his brother's bloodied body outside of the eighth-floor window in the city's Ramat Sharet neighborhood and called police, saying that a Palestinian terrorist had killed his brother. The teen, who had originally been facing murder charges, later confessed to the killing as part of a plea bargain whereby the charges were reduced to manslaughter. "The action that the accused carried out is unprecedented," Judge Zvi Segal wrote in his ruling, calling the teen a danger to society. The suspect's parents had testified on his behalf - with his own mother serving as a character witness - testimony that the court said "punctured our hearts like an arrow." The court said the teen's action provoked "horror and terror," comparing it to the biblical story of Cain and Abel. "Instead of serving as a personal example to his late brother who was six years younger, he killed him over nothing," the court said.