Mother of 8-month-old stabbed to death at home near Jerusalem, husband suspected
Police are still trying to understand the motive of what appears to be a shocking murder of 32-year-old Michal Sela late Thursday night in her Motza home outside Jerusalem in front of her eight-monthold baby, allegedly at the hands of her husband, Eliran Malul.
Police suspect Sela was killed by her husband, who then attempted to take his own life. Police found Sela’s body in the couple’s home with multiple stab wounds.
According to Walla, Sela’s husband was discovered badly injured on the steps of a neighbor’s porch, where he collapsed after passing off his infant daughter to the couple who lived next door. Neighbors told Walla that he stumbled over, bleeding, and mumbled, “Please help, my wife and I just tried to commit suicide,” before he passed out.
He was hospitalized at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem in critical condition. He was sedated and on a ventilator, his lawyer said Friday, and therefore unable as yet to give his account of what had happened.
“This is a terrible tragedy,” Malul’s lawyer, Idan Gamlieli, said. “The defendant is hospitalized in serious condition, anesthetized, and so his version of the story has still not
been heard. Once his medical condition improves, we will be able to learn his version of the chain of events and examine what to do from there.”
Sela, from Beit Zayit, near Motza, was a social worker in Jerusalem, as was her husband, and met Malul as part of their work helping at-risk teens. Police said there were no records of prior domestic violence incidents involving the couple, and friends and family expressed shock at the alleged murder.
“I’m still not processing what happened,” Sela’s brother, Avihu, told Walla. “Michal was so full of light. She spread joy wherever she went.”
Sela’s sister Noga added that her sister “always believed that even a single smile could change a person’s entire world.”
The couple’s baby was taken in by Sela’s sister, Lily BenAmi. A flood of breast milk was offered to be donated to the baby following the murder.
Ben-Ami posted on Facebook about a conversation during the last dinner she had with Sela and her husband.
“At that last dinner, her murderer made a very unusual statement,” she wrote. “He said that in criminal offenses, the suffering of the attacker is bigger than that of the victim. Michal told him that that’s not true, and so did our sister, Noga, and I. He insisted that the attacker suffers more and specified that it is due to the background of the attacker and the things he went through in his past.”
Sela was buried Friday after
noon in Beit Zayit. •