The young teen who was struck and killed on Highway 6 was identified as Yosef Chaim Efrati from Netivot. As reported, the fatal incident occurred as he and friends were returning from a visit to kivrei tzaddikim, just a week after his bar mitzvah.
Yosef Chaim went out with his classmates in the talmud torah in the city to the north. On the way back, they stopped at a parking lot on a road on Route 6 south. For reasons that are not yet clear, the youth took his tefilin and left. The teacher, who later noticed that he was missing, immediately telephoned the police. At the same time Lital, who was driving along the road, informed the police of a wandering boy.
“I called the police at 23:44 to report the boy who was standing in a very dangerous place and was almost invisible because of his dark attire, but after a few seconds after I ended the conversation I saw a police car on the opposite lane and hoped that they were on their way to help him but in retrospect, it appears not” Lital explains, still agitated by the difficult case and the feeling that perhaps he could have been saved.
“I was horrified by the news” stated Lital angrily, “The passive attitude of police in dealing with this” she adds, admitting it is unclear if police had sufficient time to get there and save him before being struck by a vehicle.
According to estimates, Yosef Chaim was killed only 15 minutes after her call to the police, as reported by Israel Gudelevsky, commander of Zaka Sharon district.
“At approximately midnight a report was received about a child who was run over by a vehicle on Highway 6 and was killed. Where the child was lying on the road lifeless. It appears they were returning from the north and stopped for refreshments on Highway 6 and for reasons that remain unclear, he headed to the roadway and was run over by a vehicle, MDA teams who came to the scene tried to resuscitate and after many efforts confirmed his death instead of “.
The Israeli police responded: “On 29 June, near midnight on Highway 6, an unfortunate accident occurred in which a 13-year-old boy was killed.”
“At approximately 23:50, a telephone call was received at the 100 dispatch center by someone reporting that he saw a child wandering along Highway 6. Immediately upon receiving the incident, a police car was dispatched to the area to search and locate the child. Immediately after receiving the report of the accident a car was dispatched to the scene and a few minutes later arrived at the scene.”
“The circumstances of the accident are being investigated by the Israel Police Examiners’ Unit.”
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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I had a crash on Kvish Echad (Jerusalem – Tel Aviv) road a few months ago at night. Had a car with seven children in, stranded in the middle of the road, with cars, busses, lorries flying past at high speed. The police took about an hour to show up, despite repeated calls, clear directions, and it being the middle of the night. The ambulance crew who came would have left us stranded there, had I not pleaded with them how unsafe it was for us – to their credit, they stayed, well beyond the end of their shift. But the police? No where to be seen.