A murder that shocked Israel: Police achieves breakthrough in investigation of murder committed by group of teenagers

Israel Police said it reached a turning point in the investigation of the gruesome murder of 21-year-old Yemanu Binyamin Zelka in Petah Tikva on Independence Day, which shocked Israelis with the casual brutality shown by a group of delinquent youths.

On the evening of the country’s Independence Day, April 21, Zelka asked a group of teenagers to leave the Pizza Hut branch where he worked after they sprayed snow foam, which is widely popular in Israel on that holiday, inside the store.

According to the police, the group of a least a dozen teenagers then waited for Zelka to finish his shift before brutally assaulting him in a coordinated ambush outside the store.

Zelka was beaten and then stabbed before being left to bleed out on the sidewalk, and succumbed to his gruesome wounds in the hospital a day later.

The senseless murder carried out by teenagers on the country’s happiest day shocked Israelis and particularly riled up the Ethiopian community to which Zelka belonged. Israeli Jews of Ethiopian descent are disproportionally impacted by poverty and violence.

The killing has also shone a new spotlight on the long-standing concerns with violence committed by teen mobs and gangs, a phenomenon that exists across the country. Shortly after the murder of Zelka, Destaw Tsakul, another young man of Ethiopian descent, was also murdered by a mob of youths in Beersheva.

On Wednesday, the police announced that the investigation had reached a turning point after three additional teenagers from Petah Tikva and Hadera were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder, bringing the total number to thirteen suspects.

One of the suspects now reportedly provided incriminating testimony against the 15-year-old main suspect who allegedly wielded the knife. Israeli media reported that this followed the suspect discussing the murder with his friends shortly afterward.

Police sources said that group of suspects, aged between 12 and 17, “conducted themselves like veteran criminals” by turning off their phones and staying away from their own homes to evade arrest. Some of the suspects had been known to the police, including two who come from a known crime family.

The Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday extended the detention of four of the previously arrested suspects until Friday, after three suspects, including two 12-year-olds, were transferred to house arrest.

Some 200 people protested outside the court, demanding “justice for Yemanu” with harsh punishments, and chanting, “Ethiopian blood is not cheap.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that he had spoken with the Zelka and Tsakul families, calling for “the heinous murderers to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” and ordering the Ministers of National Security and Education to “increase enforcement and to hold a focused dialogue within the education system to ensure such incidents do not recur.”

“The Prime Minister expressed his profound shock to the families over these criminal acts that cut short the lives of wonderful young men who had their entire futures ahead of them,” his office stated.

Following the end of the traditional mourning period on Monday, Zelka’s older brother Geteso told reporters at the crime scene that “on the day the whole country was supposed to celebrate, he went to work and didn’t come back.”

“These criminals knew to wait for him outside, beat him… to stab at the appropriate angle, leave him bleeding to death, and run away.”

“He was a truly good kid… You have no idea how much my brother helped the family, our mother, on a daily basis,” said Geteso, noting his brother had just finished his army service and served as a counselor in the Bnei Akiva youth group.

Zelka’s older sister Yaros accused the killers’ parents, who were arrested in connection with the murder, of helping the youths, who she said were “extremely professional criminals.”