Police are permitting publication of the abduction of a 7-year-old girl from an Ashdod chareidi school. The gag order on the case was lifted on Wednesday, 18 Kislev.
Police last week arrested a non-religious Jerusalem taxi driver, 48, suspected of abducting the young child using sweets to seduce her into the vehicle. He then drove to an isolated forest area in the Beit Shemesh area and brutally attacked her. When she began screaming he fled, leaving her in the forest.
The story begins on Monday 9 Kislev as police received a call that a small girl was found in a forest area near Beit Shemesh. Police quickly realized this was the missing child from Ashdod. The child was found crying on the side of the road by a nurse who was driving by. Due to the serious nature of the events police established a special team to deal with the case. Police learned she did not know the man who abducted her as she waited for her school bus at the end of the school day.
Police used area surveillance cameras to obtain information and they saw the child getting into the taxi at her Ashdod school. Police arrested the suspect on Thursday 12 Kislev during the evening. He was remanded and held in custody by the Ashdod Magistrate Court.
The school’s principal explains the driver waited opposite her stop and told her that her father instructed him to come and pick her up, giving her candy as she agreed to enter the taxi, which she believed was going to drive her home. Israel Police Southern District Chief Yoram Halevy calls the incident “a parent’s worst nightmare”.
Officials involved in the case stress social workers and other professionals are working with the victim and her family in the hope of permitting them all to deal with the horrific reality of what occurred as best as possible.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
There should be ban from using that taxi company
How was such a young child able to get into a taxi without a school staff member being aware?!
It sounds like such negligence!
My heart breaks for this child and her family.
#1. With that logic, you’d have to ban every Yeshiva that has a molester working in it too.
to #1 – there are evil people all over the world and though the taxi company should check out their drivers, he may have passed all their criteria for driving etc – there should be a rule that parents must notify the school when changes are made to the regular scheduling of a childs routine – and there should be monitoring at the time of dismissal that knows of these changes – thereby seeing a child going off with strangers would be avoided – if something out of the ordinary occurs there should be adult presence around watching and not leaving a 7 year old to make decisions !!!!!!! Hashem yishmor but we must doi our hishtadlus and prevent these occurances ! May Hashem watch over us all