Police: Man kills wife in front of kids in Petah Tikva

Eritrean migrant stabs wife to death in front of their two young children, before attempting to hang self, police say.

By BEN HARTMAN
police car 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
police car 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
A man beat and stabbed his wife to death in their apartment in Petah Tikva late Tuesday night, while the couple’s children, aged two and five, were in the room.
Police said the man – who, like his wife, is an Eritrean migrant in his 30s – tried to hang himself inside the apartment, but was stopped by his neighbors, who called police.
Neighbors were taking care of the children until the welfare department took their case, police added.
A very similar incident involving an Eritrean couple took place in Ashdod on Sunday night, during which a young husband stabbed his wife in the neck and then tried to hang himself from a tree outside the apartment.
The man was saved by a passerby, and both he and his wife recovered in the hospital.
Two weeks beforehand, an Eritrean migrant stabbed his wife in the neck, killing her, in their apartment on Solomon Street near the old central bus station in Tel Aviv.
The man fled the scene but was arrested a few days later.
Tuesday night’s killing took place in the same building, at 1 Bar Kochba Street, where earlier in the day police raided an illegal casino. The two incidents were not related, police said.
On Wednesday, Eilat police reported that a 49-year-old local man had been arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife in a fit of rage in their apartment overnight.
Eilat Police spokesman Ch.- Insp. Lior Ben-Simon said the suspect said that he woke up in the middle of the night and beat his girlfriend in the head repeatedly with his fists, before returning to sleep. In the morning, he said, he awoke to find her lying on the kitchen floor showing no signs of life.
The couple had lived together for 14 years and although police had no record of any criminal complaint about domestic violence from the couple, the boyfriend did say that for years they had fought about his dissatisfaction with her performance of household duties, Ben-Simon said.